Barbara Bush: Vice President: J. Danforth Quayle: Secretary of State: James A. Baker (1989–1992) Secretary of State: Lawrence Eagleburger (1992–1993) Secretary of Defense: Richard B. Cheney (1989–1993) Secretary of the Interior: Manuel Lujan (1989–1993) Attorney General: Richard L. Thornburgh (1989–1991) Attorney General: William P ...
President Bush's Cabinet. The tradition of the Cabinet dates back to the beginnings of the Presidency itself. One of the principal purposes of the Cabinet (drawn from Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution) is to advise the President on any subject he may require relating to the duties of their respective offices.
Mar 23, 2007 · In a similar vein, the Justice Department recently supplied Congress with a district-by-district listing of U.S. attorneys who served prior …
Alberto GonzalesOfficial portrait, 200580th United States Attorney GeneralIn office February 3, 2005 – September 17, 2007PresidentGeorge W. Bush31 more rows
The President of the United States has the authority to appoint U.S. Attorneys, with the consent of the United States Senate, and the President may remove U.S. Attorneys from office. In the event of a vacancy, the United States Attorney General is authorized to appoint an interim U.S. Attorney.
In the order of creation, the position of attorney general was the fourth cabinet level position created by Congress, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Attorneys general may be impeached and removed from office by Congress. As of 2013 the office of U.S. Attorney General has been held by eighty two people.
As Attorney General, Reno oversaw the Justice Department and its 95,000 employees. Reno remained Attorney General for the rest of Clinton's presidency, making her the longest-serving Attorney General since William Wirt in 1829.
Attorneys General. While impeachment proceedings against cabinet secretaries is an exceedingly rare event, no office has provoked the ire of the House of Representatives than that of Attorney General. During the first fifth of the 21st century, no less than three Attorneys General have been subjected to the process.
He can be removed by the President at any time. He can quit by submitting his resignation only to the President. Since he is appointed by the President on the advice of the Council of Ministers, conventionally he is removed when the council is dissolved or replaced.
The current Attorney General is Mr. Godfred Yeboah Dame. He was appointed by President Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo in 2021.
California Former Attorneys GeneralMatthew Rodriguez2021 – 2021John K. Van de Kamp1983 – 1991George Deukemejian1979 – 1983Evelle J. Younger1971 – 1979Thomas C. Lynch1964 – 197129 more rows
four-yearUnder the state Constitution, the Attorney General is elected to a four-year term in the same statewide election as the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Controller, Secretary of State, Treasurer, Superintendent of Public Instruction, and Insurance Commissioner.
On March 12, 1993, Ms. Reno became the first woman and 78th attorney general. She went on to become the longest serving attorney general in the 20th century.Mar 16, 2021
Edmund Jennings RandolphOn September 26, 1789, Edmund Jennings Randolph was appointed the first Attorney General of the United States by President George Washington.
Jeff SessionsOfficial portrait, 201784th United States Attorney GeneralIn office February 9, 2017 – November 7, 2018PresidentDonald Trump33 more rows
Terrorism had emerged as an important national security issue in the Clinton administration, and it became one of the dominant issues of the Bush administration. In the late 1980s, Osama bin Laden had established al-Qaeda, a militant Sunni Islamist multi-national organization that sought to overthrow Western-backed governments in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and Pakistan. In response to Saudi Arabia's decision to begin hosting U.S. soldiers in 1991, al-Qaeda had begun a terrorist campaign against U.S. targets, orchestrating attacks such as the 1998 USS Cole bombing. During Bush's first months in office, U.S. intelligence organizations intercepted communications indicating that al-Qaeda was planning another attack on the United States, but foreign policy officials were unprepared for a major attack on the United States. Bush was briefed on al-Qaeda's activities, but focused on other foreign policy issues during his first months in office.
Rather than bringing the prisoners before domestic or international courts, Bush decided to set up a new system of military tribunals to try the prisoners. In order to avoid the restrictions of the United States Constitution, Bush held the prisoners at secret CIA prisons in various countries as well as at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Because the Guantanamo Bay camp is on territory that the U.S. technically leases from Cuba, individuals within the camp are not accorded the same constitutional protections that they would have on U.S. territory. Bush also decided that these " enemy combatants " were not entitled to all of the protections of the Geneva Conventions as they were not affiliated with sovereign states. In hopes of obtaining information from the prisoners, Bush allowed the use of " enhanced interrogation techniques " such as waterboarding. The treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, a U.S. prison in Iraq, elicited widespread outrage after photos of prisoner abuse were made public.
In December 2006, Bush dismissed eight United States attorneys. Though these attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president, the large-scale mid-term dismissal was without precedent, and Bush faced accusations that he had dismissed the attorneys for purely political reasons. During the 2006 elections, several Republican officials complained that the U.S. attorneys had not sufficiently investigated voter fraud. With the encouragement of Harriet Miers and Karl Rove, Attorney General Gonzales dismissed eight U.S. attorneys who were considered insufficiently supportive of the administration's policies. Though Gonzales argued that the attorneys had been fired for performance reasons, publicly released documents showed that the attorneys were dismissed for political reasons. As a result of the dismissals and the subsequent congressional investigations, Rove and Gonzales both resigned. A 2008 report by the Justice Department inspector general found that the dismissals had been politically motivated, but no one was ever prosecuted in connection to the dismissals.
Damaged by the unpopularity of the Iraq War and President Bush , the Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress in the 2006 elections. Republicans were also damaged by various scandals, including the Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal and the Mark Foley scandal. The elections confirmed Bush's declining popularity, as many of the candidates he had personally campaigned for were defeated. After the elections, Bush announced the resignation of Rumsfeld and promised to work with the new Democratic majority.
In his 2002 State of the Union Address, Bush grouped Iran with Iraq and North Korea as a member of the "Axis of Evil", accusing Iran of aiding terrorist organizations. In 2006, Iran re-opened three of its nuclear facilities, potentially allowing it to begin the process of building a nuclear bomb. After the resumption of the Iranian nuclear program, many within the U.S. military and foreign policy community speculated that Bush might attempt to impose regime change on Iran. In December 2006, the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1737, which imposed sanctions on Iran in order to curb its nuclear program.
As Bush's top foreign policy advisers were in agreement that merely launching strikes against al-Qaeda bases would not stop future attacks, the administration decided to overthrow Afghanistan 's conservative Taliban government , which harbored the leaders of al-Qaeda. Powell took the lead in assembling allied nations in a coalition that would launch attacks on multiple fronts. The Bush administration focused especially on courting Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf, who agreed to join the coalition. On September 14, Congress passed a resolution called the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, authorizing the president to use the military against those responsible for the attacks. On October 7, 2001, Bush ordered the invasion of Afghanistan.
On his first day in office, President Bush reinstated the Mexico City policy, thereby blocking federal aid to foreign groups that offered assistance to women in obtaining abortions. Days later, he announced his commitment to channeling more federal aid to faith-based service organizations, despite the fears of critics that this would dissolve the traditional separation of church and state in the United States. To further this commitment, he created the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives to assist faith-based service organizations. In 2003, Bush signed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which banned intact dilation and extraction, an abortion procedure.
Attorney General Gonzales, in a confidential memorandum dated March 1, 2006, delegated authority to senior DOJ staff Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson to hire and dismiss political appointees and some civil service positions.
The change in the law undermined the confirmation authority of the Senate and gave the Attorney General greater appointment powers than the President, since the President's U.S. Attorney appointees are required to be confirmed by the Senate and those of the Attorney General did not require confirmation.
White House spokesman Scott Stanzel stated that some of the emails that had involved official correspondence relating to the firing of attorneys may have been lost because they were conducted on Republican party accounts and not stored properly. "Some official e-mails have potentially been lost and that is a mistake the White House is aggressively working to correct." said Stanzel, a White House spokesman. Stonzel said that they could not rule out the possibility that some of the lost emails dealt with the firing of U.S. attorneys. For example, J. Scott Jennings, an aide to Karl Rove communicated with Justice Department officials "concerning the appointment of Tim Griffin, a former Rove aide, as U.S. attorney in Little Rock, according to e-mails released in March, 2007. For that exchange, Jennings, although working at the White House, used an e-mail account registered to the Republican National Committee, where Griffin had worked as a political opposition researcher."
On September 29, 2008 the Justice Department's Inspector General (IG) released a report on the matter that found most of the firings were politically motivated and improper.
A subsequent report by the Justice Department Inspector General in October 2008 found that the process used to fire the first seven attorneys and two others dismissed around the same time was "arbitrary", "fundamentally flawed" and "raised doubts about the integrity of Department prosecution decisions".
Allegations were that some of the attorneys were targeted for dismissal to impede investigations of Republican politicians or that some were targeted for their failure to initiate investigations that would damage Democratic politicians or hamper Democratic-leaning voters.
The IG's report contained "substantial evidence" that party politics drove a number of the firings, and IG Glenn Fine said in a statement that Gonzales had "abdicated his responsibility to safeguard the integrity and independence of the department.".
Rejecting the idea of a powerful White House chief of staff, Bush had high-level officials report directly to him rather than Chief of Staff Andrew Card. Vice President Cheney emerged as the most powerful individual in the White House aside from Bush himself. Bush brought to the White House several individuals who had worked under him in Texas, including Senior Counselor Karen Hughes, Senior Adviser Karl Rove, legal counsel Alberto Gonzales, and Staff Secretary Harriet Miers. …
The oldest son of George H. W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States, George W. Bush emerged as a presidential contender in his own right with his victory in the 1994 Texas gubernatorial election. After winning re-election by a decisive margin in the 1998 Texas gubernatorial election, Bush became the widely acknowledged front-runner in the race for the Republicannomination in t…
After the 2004 election, many expected that the aging Chief Justice William Rehnquist would step down from the United States Supreme Court. Cheney and White House Counsel Harriet Miers selected two widely respected conservatives, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals judge John Roberts and Fourth Circuit judge Michael Luttig, as the two finalists. In June 2005, Justice Sandra Day O'C…
Bush's promise to cut taxes was the centerpiece of his 2000 presidential campaign, and upon taking office, he made tax cuts his first major legislative priority. A budget surplus had developed during the Bill Clinton administration, and with the Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan's support, Bush argued that the best use of the surplus was to lower taxes. By the time Bush took offic…
Upon taking office, Bush had little experience with foreign policy, and his decisions were guided by his advisers. Bush embraced the views of Cheney and other neoconservatives, who de-emphasized the importance of multilateralism; neoconservatives believed that because the United States was the world's lone superpower, it could act unilaterally if necessary. At the same time, Bush soug…
In July 2005, Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney's respective chief political advisers, Karl Rove and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, came under fire for revealing the identity of covert Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent Valerie Plame to reporters in the CIA leak scandal. Plame's husband, Joseph C. Wilson, had challenged Bush's assertion that Hussein had sought to obtain uranium from …
Bush's approval ratings ran the gamut from high to all-time record low. Bush began his presidency with ratings near fifty percent. In the time of national crisis following the September 11 attacks, polls showed approval ratings of greater than 85%, peaking in one October 2001 poll at 92%, and a steady 80–90% approval for about four months after the attacks. Afterward, his ratings steadil…