Government for the People: Reflections of a White House Counsel to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson
Dad29 (Free subscription) | 4 hours ago
Instructive narrative from Tom Roeser . ...Take the case of Paul Vallas. An outstanding Democratic public official he served as chief budget adviser to the president of the state Senate, chief budgeter for the city of Chicago under Mayor Daley. Daley took over the job of running the city's public schools by legislative fiat to replace a system where the schools were run loosely by a board of education...
The Reaction (Free subscription) | 8 hours ago
By Michael J.W. Stickings Yesterday, quoting Andrew Sullivan, I noted that I remain bullish on Obama -- though I also noted my own rather significant reservations. Well, those reservations deepened when I read Time 's excellent piece on the fall of Greg Craig , Obama's ex-counsel. Craig, a Clintonite turned Obama advisor, was the man tasked with undoing the dark side of Bush's war on terror, including...
Perspective Journal: News and Polit (Free subscription) | 13 hours ago
Filed under: Iraq, Deep Background I was reviewing the guest list for President Barack Obama’s first state dinner–held to honor Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh–and it was full of interesting picks: Ari Emanuel, Rahm Emanuel’s brother and a notorious Hollywood power-agent; Gayle King, Oprah’s BFF; Greg Craig, the soon-to-be-ex White House counsel; Michael Bloomberg,...
The Huffington Post (Free subscription) | yesterday
Maureen Dowd's New York Times column this week details the fall of outgoing White House council Greg Craig, and drops an interesting tidbit concerning Caroline Kennedy's senate bid along the way. According to Dowd, a "vengeful" Bill Clinton was aggressively lobbying Paterson to keep Kennedy out of the Senate. Dowd argues that Obama's handling of Craig's departure -- the "death by a thousand...
The Washington Note (Free subscription) | 11/23/2009
After publishing a Daily Beast piece titled "The Assassination of Greg Craig," I did this interview above with Cenk Uygar of The Young Turks that some folks may find interesting. -- Steve Clemons...
The Huffington Post (Free subscription) | 11/22/2009
Nearly 100 days after Barack Obama entered office, his top White House lawyer, Greg Craig, braced the President's senior advisers for a potentially explosive development. The Administration was preparing to release photographs of suspected terrorists being abused in U.S. custody. On April 16, Craig asked chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to focus on the issue. Emanuel pleaded for more time to bury the release...
TalkLeft (Free subscription) | 11/21/2009
Time Magazine reports on The Fall of Greg Craig : Obama quietly killed the Gitmo plan in the second week of May; Craig never got a chance to argue the case to the President. "It was a political decision, to put it bluntly," says an aide. ...The White House realized it had to start over on a signature issue....First to go was the release of the pictures of detainee abuse. Days later, Obama...
neo-neocon (Free subscription) | 11/21/2009
Elizabeth Drew reports that many inside-the-Beltway Obama supporters are angry that Greg Craig was tossed under the bus by this administration, with Obama’s tacit approval and acquiescence while others did the dirty work. It’s a curiously naive article. The sentence that interested me most in that regard was this: Yes, we knew, or should have, during [...]
MediaBistro.com (Free subscription) | 11/20/2009
Stengel, Ratnesar and Isaacson. Former chief counsel to President Obama Greg Craig made one of his first public appearances, since his announced departure, last night at a book party for Time 's Romesh Ratnesar . The Aspen Institute's Walter Isaacson and his wife Cathy Isaacson threw the mag's deputy managing editor at a party at their home to toast "Tear Down This Wall." Isaacson had big...
Kevin Drum - Mother Jones (Free subscription) | 11/20/2009
Time has an interesting tick-tock this week about Greg Craig, the White House lawyer tasked with dismantling Bush-era interrogation and detention policies. At first, Obama was on board with Craig's plans. Then, reality set in. Here he is deciding whether to release a set of "torture memos" last spring: Obama arrived at [Rahm] Emanuel's office a few minutes later, took off his windbreaker...
Political Wire (Free subscription) | 11/20/2009
A must-read piece in Time shows how the Obama administration's decision to release photographs of suspected terrorists being abused in U.S. custody was part of an "unseen struggle" that ultimately led to Greg Craig's announced departure as White House counsel. "Interviews with two dozen current and former officials show that Obama's public decision to reverse himself and fight the release...
Firedoglake (Free subscription) | 11/17/2009
Marc Ambinder reports that it wasn't national security differences that did Greg Craig in (even though he provides evidence of that), it was Craig's inability to get people confirmed by the Senate.
The Plank (Free subscription) | 11/16/2009
Following up on Mike's post about the various people Obama has thrown under the bus, it does seem that there's an unusual amount of handwringing going on about Greg Craig, or at least about the manner in which he was thrown, through a series of well-orchestrated leaks. One of the most overwrought bits comes Steve Clemons who, in a Daily Beast piece titled "The Assassination of Greg Craig,"...
Hullabaloo (Free subscription) | 11/16/2009
Assassination By Leak by digby There is a lot of chatter about what exactly happened with the apparent ouster of White House counsel Greg Craig. Steve Clemons worries about the fact that it seems to be a sign that the factionalism that happens in most administrations is reasserting itself in the "No Drama Obama" White House: In fact, leaks are becoming standard fare by key players in the...
Power Line (Free subscription) | 11/16/2009
As Barack Obama's presidency stumbles through its first year, some of his supporters are wondering what ever happened to the "No Drama Obama" of those heady days of the campaign. For example, Steve Clemons , unhappy about the demise of ultra-liberal White House Counsel Greg Craig, writes that Craig's fall and the leaks associated with it stand in sharp contrast to the internal vow of key...
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