Capital Briefs

* NEW CARD, SAME DECK: The resignation of White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card last week and his replacement with Joshua B. Bolten, who had been serving as director of the Office of Management and Budget, signals no change in the Bush White House.

Bolten, like Card, is nothing if not a Bush loyalist. In Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, Bolten served as policy director. Before that, according to the New York Times, he spent five years at Goldman Sachs, where his duties included lobbying the European Union and serving as an assistant to thenGoldman Sachs President Jon Corzine, who is now the Democratic governor of New Jersey. Before becoming OMB director, Bolten was Bush's deputy chief of staff for policy. In that role, he had a hand in the good things Bush did on domestic policy early in his presidency-such as tax cuts-and also in the bad things - such as the No Child Left Behind education law. Republicans on Capitol Hill met Bolten's elevation with benign boredom. "This is not a change," Sen. Trent Lott (R.Miss.) told Roll Call, "this is just Josh Bolten moving from the OMB to chief of staff."

* BAN HUMAN PESTICIDE: The Food and Drug Administration revealed on March 17 that two women had died after taking the abortion drug RU-486. That brought to six the number of U.S. women whose deaths have been associated with the drug. How high will the death toll go?

That may depend on whether the Republican Congress can quickly pass Holly's Law sponsored by Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R.-Md.), who holds a Ph.D in Human Physiology. The law is named after Holly Patterson, an 18-year-old California girl who died of toxic shock after taking RU-486. "The FDA's continued timid treatment is leaving American women vulnerable to deadly infections," said Bartlett at a press conference last week. "How many more American women must die or be injured before Congress acts to protect American women's lives and health by approving Holly's law?" Rep. Chris Smith (R.-N.J.), co-chairman of the House Pro-Life Caucus, said: "RU-486 was rushed to approval for political purposes by the Clinton Administration, and as a result, numerous safety concerns were suppressed, trivialized and overlooked." Will an all-Republican government leave this lethal Clintonite mistake uncorrected? Stay tuned.

* FILIBUSTER SUCCEEDS: Gone are the days when Republicans talked tough about ending judicial filibusters. President Bush first nominated Michigan Court of Appeals Judge Henry Saad to the Cincinnati-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in November 2001. Ever since then, Saad's nomination has been filibustered by Senate Democrats, with Senators Debbie Stabenow (D.-Mich.) and Carl Levin (D.-Mich.) leading the way.

Saad told the Associated Press last week that he stepped aside in the hope that someone else might be confirmed to the 6th Circuit by the Senate before the mid-term elections begin closing the window for the confirmation of Bush appellate court nominees. "If something's going to happen before the midterm elections," he said, "it seemed to me the timing was appropriate and it seemed to me also that my nomination was not going to move forward." There was no final fight for Saad from the White House. No fight from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R.Tenn.). No talk of triggering the nuclear option. No complaint from the Gang of 14.

* VETO AN ENFORCMENT BILL? When HUMAN EVENTS Political Editor John Gizzi last week asked White House Press secretary Scott McClellan whether President Bush would veto an immigration reform bill if it did not include a guest-worker program, McClellan didn't give a straight answer. "We have a long way to go, and you are asking a lot of 'what ifs,'" he said. He went on to say that Bush will "talk a lot about his vision of comprehensive immigration reform" in the coming weeks.

* MCKINNEY SMACKS COP: It's hard to imagine that such an unusual event would have been equally ignored by the press, if, say, it had been a Republican member of Congress who smacked a U.S. Capitol Police officer. But for much of the Washington press corps it was a non-story when Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D.-Ga.) slugged a cop at a secured entrance to the Capitol complex. "McKinney, a sixth-term Democratic congresswoman, entered a House office building unrecognized, refused to stop when asked, then struck an officer, according to police," the Associated Press reported. "No charges were filed."

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Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Apr 3, 2006
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