May 10, 2005
MR. KRUGMAN, WHAT WAS ENRON?:
Court sides with Cheney in energy policy lawsuit (Associated Press, May 10, 2005)
A lawsuit seeking to force Vice President Dick Cheney to reveal details about the energy policy task force he headed and the pro-industry recommendations it made was scuttled today by a federal appeals court.The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously found that two private groups that sued Cheney failed to establish that the federal government had a legal duty to produce documents detailing the White House's contacts with business executives and lobbyists.
The lawsuit, filed by the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch, alleged that energy industry officials effectively became members of the task force, while environmental groups and others were shut out of the meetings. It also argued that the task force was a federal advisory committee with an obligation to publicly disclose its operations.
The appeals court disagreed. "There is nothing to indicate that nonfederal employees had a right to vote on committee matters or exercise a veto over committee proposals," it said. The court ordered a lower court to dismiss the case.
Cheney's energy task force was not an advisory committee and "it follows that the government owed the plaintiffs no duty, let alone a clear and indisputable or compelling one," said the opinion by Judge A. Raymond Randolph.
Considering the regularity with which the Administration wins these suits, it's a good thing its foes are shameless. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 10, 2005 5:34 PM
This decision must be an example of why the Democrats cannot yield an inch on judicial nominations. They want Laurence Tribe deciding such matters, not Miguel Estrada or Janice Rogers Brown.
Posted by: jim hamlen at May 10, 2005 8:36 PMThis is why, the next angle is the fictional insinuation in works like Beinhart's the
Librarian or most recently Russell Andrews
MIDAS, which posits a Enron/Halliburton multinational conspiracy, involving thinly
veiled caricatures of Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft
in league with the Saudi's; covered up with
strategically targeted suicide bombings, at
likely whistleblowers, uncovered by a lone
NY cop, who is imprisoned in Gitmo, for his
troubles, under a Super Patriot Act (Soon to
be a major motion picture, no doubt)
Not that Dick Cheney should care all that much, but this figures to be one of those Raymond Donovan "Where do I go to get my reputation back?" kind of things. While the portrayal of the energy policy task force was being demonized as a behind-closed-doors conspiracy between the VP and his Big Oil croneys, the court ruling will be a one-day story that's likely to draw nowhere near the attention the original attacks attracted (and the big media outlets did their part by basically taking the Democrats' claims with the utmost seriousness. If I remember right, when similar claims were made about Hillary's use of non-governmental people to craft her health care policy, suits brought against that effort were often described by the major outlets as "a fishing expidition").
Posted by: John at May 10, 2005 11:03 PM