One More Box In The Wall
Having once been a designated grand jury archivist, I am not unfamiliar with the process of gathering, copying, and reviewing copious quantities of documents. My fallen arches, compressed buttocks, and gratuitous astigmatism are mute testaments to the time I expended in that capacity.
There is, however, a difference between combing through stacks and boxes and truckloads of paper for things that may be, if you will, criminally incriminating, and searching for items that may be ideologically incriminating. For starters, you only have to find documents that are from the person that is in the public relations crosshairs, and if you are a supporter of that person, determine whether the potential for those crosshairs to become short hairs.
Hugh Hewitt clearly didn't want to have to wade through a forest worth of twenty-year old memos and notes and scribblings, and being the Blogfather, he didn't have to. Knowing that we hordes of minibloggers will do just about anything for a link on a megablog site, Double-H organized what could be called "Son of Vox Bloguli" - in this version, the mass blogospherical vetting of the latest document dump from the Reagan presidential library of every last post-it note (wait, did they have post-it notes twenty years ago....?) having the remotest connection to SCOTUS nominee John G. Roberts, Jr. from his time in the Reagan White House counsel's office.
It's a wonderful idea in that it gets the grassroots involved in defending the Roberts nomination, and an example of the power through numbers of the blogosphere. The downside is that depending upon the luck of the draw, the individual blogger's box 'o docs may have a flaming red flagged memo with an attached siren whooping at triple decibels; or, far more likely, it will contain top-to-bottom prosaica, to the degree that there are any docs actually written by Judge Roberts at all.
That's not a complaint, mind you. Besides, I didn't know if you could bid on a particular box. And it's not like I'm an attorney anyway. I'm just naturally windy.
So, anyway, I drew Box 3-JGR/Appointee Clearances 07/09/1983-07/31/1983. Let's open 'er up and see if there's a prize inside.
Hmm. 25 pages. A fairly light load.
Page 1 - Cover sheet
Page 2 - Table of contents
Page 3 - Non-Roberts memo
Page 4 - White House press release on President Reagan's appointees to the National Advisory Committee for Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Wow, one's a high school kid. Should I be surprised?
Page 5 - White House press release on President Reagan's appointment of A. Wayne Roberts to the post of Deputy Undersecretary for Intergovernmental and Interagency Affairs at the Department of Education
Page 6-7 - Ahhh, now we're cooking. A memo from Judge Roberts to Dianna G. Holland regarding ten appointments to the President's Commission on Industrial Competitiveness
Lessee. He mentions that this commission was recently created by Executive Order. Its purpose - to review means of increasing American industrial competitiveness with particular emphasis on high technology. Sounds conceptually a lot like President Bush's Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate.
He explains that it was established in such a fashion that its private sector members would not be considered government employees for purposes of the conflict of interest laws - i.e. they were not paid for their advisory services. Sounds like Vice President Cheney's energy task force that the Democrats made such a futile stink over.
The private sector members were to represent industry, commerce, labor, and academia most affected by high technology and possess "particular knowledge and expertise concerning the technological factors affecting the ability of United States firms to meet international competition at home and abroad." In other words, they had to know something about the field(s) to which they were appointed to render advice. The Dems didn't like that about Cheney's energy task force, either.
Four of the ten nominees were from industry. Two were eeeeevil bankers - one of them was a venture capitalist! Two were academics, one from Harvard Business School. Only one person from labor. Doubtless Judge Roberts anticipated lefty bleats that this rafter of appointments was stacked in favor of "big business," since he spends a considerable portion of the paragraph in question detailing the qualifications and accomplishments of the labor representative, a former general counsel to the United Auto Workers.
JR explains that all the appointees have affiliations and holdings with high tech firms but that divestiture is unnecessary since they will be serving in a representative capacity (i.e. as advocates). He adds that the tenth nominee, a government employee shortly to resign so that he will qualify as being from the private sector, will be officially appointed after his resignation takes effect.
Sounds like bureaucratic nuts & bolts. Nothing of an advisory or policymaking nature here.
Page 8 - Non-Roberts memo
Page 9 - Appointment Process Interview Personal Record, conducted by Judge Roberts.
JR interviewed Josephine S. Cooper for the post of Assistant Administrator for Congressional and External Affairs at the EPA. Oooh, this could be juicy.
Hmm. Mentions that Ms. Cooper is an "independent." Says she's thoroughly experienced, both from service at the EPA and on the staff (didn't say whether it was majority or minority) of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee. Her personal data statement and financial disclosure report are clean. Ran out of rubber gloves before administering her rectal cavity search, so he had to use Saran wrap instead. Okay, I made up that last part. Recommends deep-sixing the appointment because she's not a Republican. Okay, I made up that one too.
Page 10-11 - More withdrawal sheets
Page 12 - Indecipherable chicken-scratch
Page 13 - Withdrawal sheet
Page 14 - Page 437 of a Treasury Department publication
Page 15 - Withdrawal sheet
Page 16-20 - A formal advisory opinion Judge Roberts evidently solicited from the Office of Government Ethics on the question, "whether or under what circumstances a federal employee's vested rights in a private corporation's pension plan constitute a financial interest under 18 U.S.C. S 208 so as to bar the employee's participating in a contract or other particular matter involving that corporation."
Roberts underlined this paragraph: "This Office and the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice have consistently taken the position that when a government employee has vested rights in the pension plan of a corporation, and the pension plan holds stock of the corporation, the employee ordinarily has a financial interest in matters affecting that corporation." This is most likely because a couple of paragraphs later the OGE opinion discloses that Judge Roberts had suggested in his solicitation that said government employee would not have a financial interest in matters affecting said corporation if said pension plan was insured by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. OGE said, "uh-uh-uh," pointing out that PBGC coverage of pension benefits is subject to ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act) limits, meaning that, say, if Ken Lay's secretary had bailed from Enron to economic policymaking six months before the company collapsed while still retaining her vestiture in its ESOP-dominated pension plan, that could have created a rather gaping conflict of interest.
OGE went even further: "Even where the pension plan under consideration neither holds stock of the sponsoring organization nor is controlled by organization employees, the determination of whether a a financial interest in a matter exists, and if so whether it is waivable, must be made on a case-by-case basis."
Page 21-22 - Withdrawal sheets
Page 23 - Non-Roberts memo
Page 24 - White House press release on President Reagan's appointments to the board of directors of the National Institute of Building Sciences
Page 25 - White House press release on President Reagan's appointment of Thomas J. Healey as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
The OGE stuff is the only potential grist for the Dem-ogoguery mill I can find in this stack. "Judge Roberts advocated Enron ethics" or some such. Kind of a pale aping of his slimings as a "clinic bomber" and "racist" and "misogynist" from this past week. But at last it would add a little variety to the ritualistic hissing.
There is, however, a difference between combing through stacks and boxes and truckloads of paper for things that may be, if you will, criminally incriminating, and searching for items that may be ideologically incriminating. For starters, you only have to find documents that are from the person that is in the public relations crosshairs, and if you are a supporter of that person, determine whether the potential for those crosshairs to become short hairs.
Hugh Hewitt clearly didn't want to have to wade through a forest worth of twenty-year old memos and notes and scribblings, and being the Blogfather, he didn't have to. Knowing that we hordes of minibloggers will do just about anything for a link on a megablog site, Double-H organized what could be called "Son of Vox Bloguli" - in this version, the mass blogospherical vetting of the latest document dump from the Reagan presidential library of every last post-it note (wait, did they have post-it notes twenty years ago....?) having the remotest connection to SCOTUS nominee John G. Roberts, Jr. from his time in the Reagan White House counsel's office.
It's a wonderful idea in that it gets the grassroots involved in defending the Roberts nomination, and an example of the power through numbers of the blogosphere. The downside is that depending upon the luck of the draw, the individual blogger's box 'o docs may have a flaming red flagged memo with an attached siren whooping at triple decibels; or, far more likely, it will contain top-to-bottom prosaica, to the degree that there are any docs actually written by Judge Roberts at all.
That's not a complaint, mind you. Besides, I didn't know if you could bid on a particular box. And it's not like I'm an attorney anyway. I'm just naturally windy.
So, anyway, I drew Box 3-JGR/Appointee Clearances 07/09/1983-07/31/1983. Let's open 'er up and see if there's a prize inside.
Hmm. 25 pages. A fairly light load.
Page 1 - Cover sheet
Page 2 - Table of contents
Page 3 - Non-Roberts memo
Page 4 - White House press release on President Reagan's appointees to the National Advisory Committee for Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Wow, one's a high school kid. Should I be surprised?
Page 5 - White House press release on President Reagan's appointment of A. Wayne Roberts to the post of Deputy Undersecretary for Intergovernmental and Interagency Affairs at the Department of Education
Page 6-7 - Ahhh, now we're cooking. A memo from Judge Roberts to Dianna G. Holland regarding ten appointments to the President's Commission on Industrial Competitiveness
Lessee. He mentions that this commission was recently created by Executive Order. Its purpose - to review means of increasing American industrial competitiveness with particular emphasis on high technology. Sounds conceptually a lot like President Bush's Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate.
He explains that it was established in such a fashion that its private sector members would not be considered government employees for purposes of the conflict of interest laws - i.e. they were not paid for their advisory services. Sounds like Vice President Cheney's energy task force that the Democrats made such a futile stink over.
The private sector members were to represent industry, commerce, labor, and academia most affected by high technology and possess "particular knowledge and expertise concerning the technological factors affecting the ability of United States firms to meet international competition at home and abroad." In other words, they had to know something about the field(s) to which they were appointed to render advice. The Dems didn't like that about Cheney's energy task force, either.
Four of the ten nominees were from industry. Two were eeeeevil bankers - one of them was a venture capitalist! Two were academics, one from Harvard Business School. Only one person from labor. Doubtless Judge Roberts anticipated lefty bleats that this rafter of appointments was stacked in favor of "big business," since he spends a considerable portion of the paragraph in question detailing the qualifications and accomplishments of the labor representative, a former general counsel to the United Auto Workers.
JR explains that all the appointees have affiliations and holdings with high tech firms but that divestiture is unnecessary since they will be serving in a representative capacity (i.e. as advocates). He adds that the tenth nominee, a government employee shortly to resign so that he will qualify as being from the private sector, will be officially appointed after his resignation takes effect.
Sounds like bureaucratic nuts & bolts. Nothing of an advisory or policymaking nature here.
Page 8 - Non-Roberts memo
Page 9 - Appointment Process Interview Personal Record, conducted by Judge Roberts.
JR interviewed Josephine S. Cooper for the post of Assistant Administrator for Congressional and External Affairs at the EPA. Oooh, this could be juicy.
Hmm. Mentions that Ms. Cooper is an "independent." Says she's thoroughly experienced, both from service at the EPA and on the staff (didn't say whether it was majority or minority) of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee. Her personal data statement and financial disclosure report are clean. Ran out of rubber gloves before administering her rectal cavity search, so he had to use Saran wrap instead. Okay, I made up that last part. Recommends deep-sixing the appointment because she's not a Republican. Okay, I made up that one too.
Page 10-11 - More withdrawal sheets
Page 12 - Indecipherable chicken-scratch
Page 13 - Withdrawal sheet
Page 14 - Page 437 of a Treasury Department publication
Page 15 - Withdrawal sheet
Page 16-20 - A formal advisory opinion Judge Roberts evidently solicited from the Office of Government Ethics on the question, "whether or under what circumstances a federal employee's vested rights in a private corporation's pension plan constitute a financial interest under 18 U.S.C. S 208 so as to bar the employee's participating in a contract or other particular matter involving that corporation."
Roberts underlined this paragraph: "This Office and the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice have consistently taken the position that when a government employee has vested rights in the pension plan of a corporation, and the pension plan holds stock of the corporation, the employee ordinarily has a financial interest in matters affecting that corporation." This is most likely because a couple of paragraphs later the OGE opinion discloses that Judge Roberts had suggested in his solicitation that said government employee would not have a financial interest in matters affecting said corporation if said pension plan was insured by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. OGE said, "uh-uh-uh," pointing out that PBGC coverage of pension benefits is subject to ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act) limits, meaning that, say, if Ken Lay's secretary had bailed from Enron to economic policymaking six months before the company collapsed while still retaining her vestiture in its ESOP-dominated pension plan, that could have created a rather gaping conflict of interest.
OGE went even further: "Even where the pension plan under consideration neither holds stock of the sponsoring organization nor is controlled by organization employees, the determination of whether a a financial interest in a matter exists, and if so whether it is waivable, must be made on a case-by-case basis."
Page 21-22 - Withdrawal sheets
Page 23 - Non-Roberts memo
Page 24 - White House press release on President Reagan's appointments to the board of directors of the National Institute of Building Sciences
Page 25 - White House press release on President Reagan's appointment of Thomas J. Healey as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
The OGE stuff is the only potential grist for the Dem-ogoguery mill I can find in this stack. "Judge Roberts advocated Enron ethics" or some such. Kind of a pale aping of his slimings as a "clinic bomber" and "racist" and "misogynist" from this past week. But at last it would add a little variety to the ritualistic hissing.
posted by JASmius at 10:26 AM
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