by TChris

Every day brings a fun new question to ask the Bush administration.

Today's question: Why did the White House block "thousands of pages of classified foreign policy and counterterrorism documents from former President Bill Clinton's White House files from being turned over to the [9/11] panel's investigators?"

Answer: withholding information is the default response in the Bush Administration.

The White House confirmed on Thursday that it had withheld a variety of classified documents from Mr. Clinton's files that had been gathered by the National Archives over the last two years in response to requests from the commission, which is investigating intelligence and law enforcement failures before the attacks.

Scott McClellan said that the administration withheld "sensitive" documents but gave the commission everything it needed to do its job. Everything it needed? Or everything the administration wanted it to have?

The Christian Science Monitor profiles Wonkette, aka Ana Marie Cox, the blogger who has taken D.C. by storm. We'll add our two cents....she's irreverant, funny, wicked, shameless and best of all, really liberal. We read her every day and you should too.

Say hello to Veep Blog-- dedicated to documenting the selection process for John Kerry's possible running mate in the 2004 Presidential Election. Will Dick Gephardt be the one? Kevin Drum reports that rumors are flying that he has the inside track right now. We think Kerry can do better.

Update: Nancy Pelosi tells Kerry to pick a veep choice by May 1.

Annie Nelson, wife of singer Willie Nelson, writes this letter to the editor in today's Maui News about Richard Clarke.

Wow. Check out Kinja, the new blog of blogs by Nick Denton:

Kinja allows even casual internet users to browse topics, explore the latest weblog writing, and then choose favorite authors to track. A personal Kinja digest contains excerpts from a user's favorites, whether they're friends who blog, or experts on a particular topic. Kinja is a blog of blogs.

There's politics, liberals, conservatives and media, among other groups. We were excited to see they included us as liberals. [link via Instapundit.]

Baby Kos is about to turn five months old. We can't resist, he's too cute. (We found the picture in Kos's comments.)

From the Journal of Higher Education: A Fascist Philosopher Helps Us Understand Contemporary Politics. It's a little cerebral for us, but not for many of you. Maybe Big Media Matt will weigh in.

A federal judge has ordered several government agencies to release documents related to Cheney's energy task force.

In an opinion released late on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman ordered seven government agencies including the Department of Energy, Department of the Interior and Bureau of Land Management to hand over pertinent documents by June 1. He was ruling on a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch and the National Resources Defense Council. The two groups had sued to force the various departments involved in the energy task force to release documents related to the task force and its deliberations. Friedman said the agencies had an obligation to release the data.

We received this from a colleague on the east coast:

What happened yesterday was absolutely ghastly. The Administration terribly miscalculated the aftermath of the war and as a result four American civilians, good and decent people who were only trying to help the Iraqis, died a horrible death. Unfortunately, we are now subject to the rule of "You broke it, you bought it," and I don't see that we have any choice but to stay and clean up our mess.

But some are taking the wrong message from this. Driving to work today I listened to a conservative talk radio host ranting about "what kind of people burn corpses and string them up from bridges?" You see where this is going, don't you? Because I couldn't help but thinking -- not so long ago, within my lifetime, it was American people who did EXACTLY the same thing to black men. A simple Google images search on "lynching" returns dozens of pictures just as frightful as what we saw yesterday, including tortured and mutilated black bodies hanging before crowds of well-dressed whites.

This sort of inhumanity is inexcusable and incomprehensible whenever it happens. But let's not suggest that the Iraqis who did this are a different breed from us, or there is something unique about Islam or Arabs that leads to cruelty.

In Michigan alone, there are 150 prisoners, ages 17 to 73, doing life without parole for crimes they committed when they were 16 or younger. The ACLU of Michigan has announced a project to examine the cases of these inmates and those similarly situated in Illinois, California, Florida and, perhaps, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Forty-one states allow juvenile offenders to be sentenced to life in prison without parole. Michigan is one of 13 states that has no minimum age for such sentences, although the youngest such prisoner in Michigan was 14 at the time of the murder.....The study will be funded by a $100,000 grant from the New York City-based JEHT Foundation, the ACLU said. The foundation's name comes from its core goals of justice, equality, human dignity and tolerance, according to its Web site.

The report should be finished by the end of the year.

This is a shame. A bill in Florida to allow juveniles serving life sentences without parole a chance to be paroled after eight years if they were under 15 at the time of the crime and had a clean record before the crime, is dead. Even Jeb Bush and state prosecutors gave "tentative endorsement" to the bill. So what happened? Strictly a party line vote--with Republicans voting against the bill.

Election-year politics made the bill a tough sell, [state sen.] Geller said. ''No elected official has ever lost reelection because they were considered too tough on crime,'' he said.

That is just sick. But what can you expect from a prison nation led by Republicans?

The Senate Judiciary Committee today voted 10 to 9 to send Bush's nomination of William Myers for a seat on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to a full vote of the Judiciary Committee. Here is what People for American Way have to say:

“If only this nomination were a bad April Fool’s Day joke. With no judicial experience, William Myers is one of the least qualified nominees the Bush Administration has put forward, and among the farthest from the mainstream of judicial philosophy. “His record demonstrates his willingness to take his private-sector advocacy as a lobbyist for the mining and cattle industries directly to his job as a public servant at the Interior Department. His anti-environmental stance and disregard for the rights of Indian tribes have led to fierce opposition from environmental groups and tribal leaders.

“Like other Bush nominees, Myers embraces a radical, ‘neo-federalist’ approach to the Constitution, so anti-government that it threatens to dismantle hard-won victories in environmental protection, reproductive choice, health and safety and social justice. His particular antipathy toward tribal rights and environmental safeguards make him the wrong choice for the 9th circuit, a huge judicial district that includes vast stretches of fragile federal lands, and is home to millions of Native Americans.

“Myers’ thin judicial qualifications, extremist philosophy and deeply troubling record should be enough to convince a majority of the Senate to reject his nomination outright. If not, we urge Senate opponents to use every means to block this nomination. The Senate has approved 173 Bush Administration nominees to the appellate and district courts, and blocked just six. If necessary, Mr. Myers should be the seventh. ”

Here is PFAW's memo on Mr. Myers.