Stories related to: Bush administration

Biofuel production has been the driving force behind the growing food crisis, pushing prices up 75%, according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian . The most detailed research ever conducted on the issue emphatically contradicts the US position that biofuels are responsible for a mere 3% price bump. It hasn’t been published, sources say, for fear of embarrassing President Bush. More »

Is Washington, or its Israeli allies, really ready to attack Iran? "The threats, counterthreats, and counter-counterthreats … have reached new levels of hysteria in recent days," Dana Milbank writes in the Washington Post . Rumblings of an Israeli strike prompted Tehran threats to close oil-shipping lanes. That would be an “act of war,” declared one US admiral—a statement superiors didn't back down from. More »

It’s comforting to think of George W. Bush as yesterday’s news, but the Decider is still very much in office and itching to tie up loose ends. These “loose ends” might include signing a treaty with Iraq, or continuing his quixotic quest for Israeli-Palestinian peace, or, more terrifyingly, attacking Iran, writes Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post. More »

Nearly seven years after 9/11, America has not only failed to capture Osama bin Laden; it has also allowed al-Qaeda to rebuild itself in lawless northwest Pakistan, near the Afghan border. The New York Times conducted more than four dozen interviews to discover how rivalries among American agencies, trouble with Pervez Musharraf, and the distraction of Iraq allowed al-Qaeda to foil Operation Cannonball, a highly classified CIA initiative. More »

Troubled US airlines could be looking to Congress to ease foreign ownership laws, as financial woes push them into the arms of new investment partners, the Wall Street Journal reports. Overseas companies, barred from holding more than 25% of the voting stock of US carriers, are eager to relax the rules. "It could be the financial exigencies of the day that finally make for a breakthrough," British Airways Chairman Martin Broughton tells the Journal. More »

Washington is seeking ways to punish Robert Mugabe for his violent "sham" of an election, President Bush said today. Bush has ordered Condoleezza Rice and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to work up sanctions against Zimbabwe, which ran a runoff ballot yesterday with Mugabe the sole candidate. Rice vowed to "press for strong action by the United Nations" against the African nation. More »

Dick Cheney’s chief of staff David Addington has long lurked in the shadows of the Bush administration, building its view of the imperial presidency, writes Dana Milbank of the Washington Post . But yesterday, “Cheney’s Cheney” was forced to step into the light and testify before Congress—and he wasn’t pleased. “Addington’s unbridled hostility was live and unfiltered yesterday,” Milbank writes. More »

North Korea's nuclear declaration is a diplomatic milestone for a Bush administration showing a more pragmatic side on a host of issues in the home stretch, writes Steven Lee Myers in the New York Times . The conciliatory approach has extended to other issues, including reducing emissions, Israel-Palestinian peace, and Iran's nuclear activities. "I think we learned a bit," says a White House adviser.  More »

The White House didn’t like the findings in a Supreme Court-mandated report on pollutants from the EPA—so it simply refused to open the email, the New York Times reports. Instead, the administration has successfully pressured the agency into releasing a watered-down, recommendation-free report. Among the omitted sections: analysis showing that tougher automobile regulation could produce $500 billion to $2 trillion in economic benefits. More »

The Justice Department screened applicants to its internship and recruitment programs for conservative attitudes and credentials, rejecting applicants with liberal-sounding resumes, the Washington Post reports. Today's report by the department’s inspector general details a history of partisan hiring practices beginning in 2002 and concludes that the process "undermined confidence in the integrity of the department's hiring processes." More »

President Bush ignored warnings that his detainee policy would spark a Supreme Court backlash, the Washington Post reports. Top lawyers both in and outside Washington said that jailing suspects without Congressional approval would push the court to rule on national security—but the White House either ignored the advice or disagreed. More »

Yesterday's Congressional deal on warrantless wiretapping will wipe out some 40 pending lawsuits against phone companies that took part in the Bush administration's eavesdropping scheme, ending 5 months of Democratic resistance to giving the telcos immunity for their actions. In what the New York Times calls to the biggest change to surveillance law in 30 years, telecoms will receive protection from lawsuits so long as a court determines that the government asked them to allow the tap. More »

Prosecutions of illegal immigrants have soared in recent months, now accounting for half of all federal cases, the Los Angeles Times reports. Some 9,350 illegal immigrants faced federal charges in March of this year, up from 3,746 in March 2007, as the Bush administration ratcheted up efforts to use jail time, and the prospect of a criminal record, as a tactic to dissuade illegal border crossers. More »

Republican maverick Chuck Hagel is being bruted as a possible running mate for Barack Obama, and it's a tempting fantasy. He's a Vietnam vet with abundant foreign policy experience and a very public split with Bush on the Iraq war; having him on the ticket would also give serious cred to Obama's post-partisan message. But he “may be a more attractive candidate in theory than in reality,” Mike Madden writes on Salon. More »

The cover is a dead ringer for the bedtime classic, and the point of Goodnight Bush is equally recognizable. In authors' Erich Origen and Gan Golan’s re-purposing of Goodnight Moon , Dubya snuggles into bed wearing a “Mission Accomplished” flight suit, in the company of “war profiteers giving three cheers,” with a crayon-redacted constitution on the wall, the New York Times reports. More »

President Bush’s tax cuts have become the governmental equivalent of a corporate poison pill, Paul Krugman observes in the New York Times , aimed at hamstringing new stewardship. Both prospective replacements have tax plans very much haunted by the Bush cuts, with one-time critic John McCain promising not only to make them permanent, but add more—and without a plan to replace revenue. More »

Britain and the European Union will slap Iran with a new round of sanctions over its refusal to curtail its nuclear program, PM Gordon Brown announced today, handing President Bush an unexpected farewell gift on the last day of his weeklong European trip. Brown froze the assets of Iran's largest bank as of today, reports the Washington Post; he also pledged about 200 more troops to join the 7,800 British soldiers already in Afghanistan. More »

With an eye to aging Boomers and Iraq vets, the Bush administration is set to propose wide-ranging new rules to improve disabled access to public spaces from retail stores to golf courses, the New York Times reports. The move, which updates  implementation of the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act, would affect 7 million businesses and all state and local government agencies. While some call the plan's $23 billion price tag too steep, advocates for the disabled say it’s not enough. More »

President Bush forced the Supreme Court’s hand by overplaying his own over Guantanamo detainees, Stuart Taylor, Jr. writes in Newsweek . Courts usually defer to Washington on national security, but Bush so flouted ordinary "ideas of justice and liberty" that he "put the Supreme Court in an impossible position." Stuck with detainees who say they are innocent, justices have granted them full access to federal courts. More »

President Bush might be touring Europe to yawns and boos, but its citizens and pundits alike will miss their favorite political punching bag when he’s gone, Gerard Baker writes in the Times of London. “They'll miss, first, having a villain in the White House,” Baker explains. “It's a really convenient excuse to avoid doing anything yourself on pressing global concerns.” More »