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GAO-08-794, June 10 Food Safety: Selected Countries'

flounder

Well-known member
July 14, 2008


The Government Accountability Office (GAO) today released the following reports, testimony, and correspondence:

LETTER REPORT

Food Safety: Selected Countries' Systems Can Offer Insights into Ensuring Import Safety and Responding to Foodborne Illness. GAO-08-794, June 10
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-08-794
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d08794high.pdf


Friday, June 13, 2008
Federal Oversight of Food Safety: FDA Has Provided Few Details GAO-08-909T
June 12, 2008
June 12, 2008

http://fdafailedus.blogspot.com/


White House invokes executive privilege in EPA inquiry

The Bush administration refuses to turn over subpoenaed documents related to
the agency's decision to prevent California from enacting stricter emissions
standards than the federal government.

By Richard Simon, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

June 21, 2008

WASHINGTON -- Escalating a fight with Democrats on Capitol Hill, the White
House on Friday invoked executive privilege in refusing to turn over
documents to a congressional committee investigating the Environmental
Protection Agency's decision to deny California permission to implement its
own vehicle emission standards.

The Bush administration asserted executive privilege hours before the House
Oversight and Government Reform Committee was to vote on whether to bring
contempt-of-Congress proceedings against EPA Administrator Stephen L.
Johnson and Susan Dudley, administrator of regulatory affairs in the White
House Office of Management and Budget, for refusing to turn over subpoenaed
documents.


Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) put off a vote on the
contempt resolutions while he considers his options.

"I don't think we've had a situation like this since Richard Nixon was
president," he said, appearing determined to press ahead, even if it leads
to a court fight. "We don't know whether this privilege that's being
asserted is valid or not."

Presidents since George Washington have claimed rights to executive branch
confidentiality, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research
Service. The Bush White House invoked executive privilege to prevent
officials from testifying about the dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys in
2006. President Clinton cited presidential privilege during investigations
into the Monica Lewinsky scandal and on other issues.

House and Senate committees have been investigating what role the White
House played in EPA decisions preventing California and other states from
enacting tougher emissions rules than the federal government and in the
EPA's approval of new ozone pollution standards.

The administration's claim of executive privilege is the latest twist in the
escalating legal and political battle over California's efforts to implement
its own law combating global warming. Critics of the EPA decision contend
that it was based on politics, not science or the law.

As Waxman considered his next move in his fight with the White House,
another House committee in the room next door grilled former Bush Press
Secretary Scott McClellan, who wrote a revealing book about his days in the
White House. The hearings were a sign of determination by Democrats not to
ease up on their oversight activities, even in the final months of the Bush
administration.

In asserting executive privilege in the EPA inquiry, the administration made
public a copy of a letter sent to the president by Atty. Gen. Michael B.
Mukasey saying that releasing internal documents "could inhibit the candor
of future deliberations among the president's staff."

EPA spokesman Tim Lyons said the agency had provided the committee with more
than 7,000 documents and devoted 2,200 hours of staff time to responding to
requests for information, and he called it "disappointing" that the
committee had decided to "politicize environmental regulations."

Jim Nussle, director of the Office of Management and Budget, took issue with
Waxman's "sudden and unwarranted" move to consider contempt proceedings,
noting that Dudley had appeared before Waxman's committee last month and was
asked "only four questions" -- and only one by the panel chairman.

"There is no valid reason for moving from mutual cooperation to unilateral
confrontation," Nussle wrote Waxman.

Waxman said: "I am very disappointed and disturbed that the administration
is keeping this information from us, and I think we have a right to it."

[email protected]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-epa21-2008jun21,0,1939720.story


snip...please see full text ;

http://sciencebushwhacked.blogspot.com/2008/06/white-house-invokes-executive-privilege.html

http://sciencebushwhacked.blogspot.com/


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