John Cole’s Balloon Juice flagged some especially appalling G.W. Bush burrowing by changing chain of succession to keep cronies in charge.

An executive order published without fanfare this month does away with a system for Pentagon succession instituted by former President George W. Bush, which played down the service secretaries and elevated positions held at the time by trusted aides to Donald H. Rumsfeld, who as defense secretary wanted it that way.

These plans governing Pentagon succession are intended to guarantee civilian control of the military during a doomsday situation, like a nuclear strike or a terrorist attack, when the defense secretary could be taken out of action at the moment when war-fighting decisions must be made. The Bush order, issued in December 2005, continued the traditional sequence of the deputy defense secretary as next in line. But it booted the Army secretary out of the No. 3 slot in the order of succession, in favor of the under secretary of defense for intelligence.

via Pentagon Memo – Obama Revises Bush Administration Succession Plan for the Pentagon – NYTimes.com.

Political crony-ism was the rationale for anything and everything during the Bush Administration. So in case Secretary of Defense and Deputy Secretary of Defense was unable to perform their duties, an under secretary of defense, who was  a Rumsfeld crony, was to be promoted before the Secretary of the Army.

Unbelievable.

President George W. Bush and his senior aides considered — and rejected — a military response to Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia, according to a new history of the conflict and interviews with former officials in the Bush administration.

With desperate Georgians begging for American help in closing down the key route through which Russian soldiers were pouring into the country, Bush’s national security aides outlined possible responses, including “the bombardment and sealing of the Roki Tunnel” and other “surgical strikes,” according to a new history of the conflict and independent interviews with former senior officials.

“In that moment of desperation these issues came onto the table, and came to the principals committee” consisting of Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and top Cabinet members, said Ron Asmus, a Clinton administration State Department official whose book, out this week, is called “The Little War That Shook the World.”

“There were people on [Vice President Dick] Cheney’s staff and [National Security Adviser Stephen] Hadley’s staff who said, ‘We can’t let Georgia go down like this.’”

via U.S. pondered military use in Georgia – Ben Smith – POLITICO.com.

Simply Unbelievable. If Cheney’s staffers and advisors thought  ”We can’t let Georgia go down like this” that means Cheney agreed and was probably the source of that hawkish opinion. Contrast that with how Cheney declined Bush’s request that he head up Katrina relief. (Wrap your head around that: the Vice President declined to fulfill a request to head up a domestic emergency relief mission from the President). You know, we are lucky the country wasn’t in worse shape when Obama took office.

I missed this.

For weeks, the right has heckled Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. for his plans to try the alleged 9/11 conspirators in New York City and his handling of the Christmas bombing plot suspect. Now the left is going to be upset: an upcoming Justice Department report from its ethics-watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), clears the Bush administration lawyers who authored the “torture” memos of professional-misconduct allegations.

While the probe is sharply critical of the legal reasoning used to justify waterboarding and other “enhanced” interrogation techniques, NEWSWEEK has learned that a senior Justice official who did the final review of the report softened an earlier OPR finding. Previously, the report concluded that two key authors—Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor—violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed “poor judgment,” say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action—which, in Bybee’s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry.

via Justice Official Clears Bush Lawyers in Torture Memo Probe – Declassified Blog – Newsweek.com

If this is true and as plain as Bybee and Yoo being cleared, the Obama Administration has proven that it has no interest in curbing the frightening expansion of the unitary executive as defined by Bush White House and the Holder Justice Department has proven it has feigned independence all along.

In addition, the fact that a 59-41 Democratic majority in the Senate means that the Senators need that same President to be their daddy to tell them where to go, before they miss every deadline, weaken the effect of every bill they write for political expediency means that there is no hope that they will pass progressive legislation making administration attorneys professionally and legally responsible for the memos they write. Even when they break the law.