Mitt Romney – Meet the New Staff – Same as The Bush Staff

Mitt Romney is the candidate you almost have to feel sorry for, but not quite, he is not a people person, his accomplishments are hugely inflated and he does not seem to know how to tell the truth.  I wonder, if you asked Romney if he anticipated another Bush-like White House should he win, how he would answer.  Just from watching him on the campaign trail, I think he would probably say to you that he would put his own stamp on his administration.  I would also laugh in his face because his campaign team is the same old worn out Bush team.  The same war mongers, the same failed monetary (so-called) experts the same old everything.  To be honest I thought I would find a few questionable people, but in the first three teams I found so much that is questionable, that I can only cover those teams in this post.  And you should know I was stunned that Romney does not have better sense or perhaps he really does think we are dumb hicks.  But don’t take my word for it, read on.

This is not a pretty post as I could not figure a way to present this information except in a block form but I tried to present the material in as clean a fashion as I could.  I hope I succeeded.

Economic Policy Team

Dean R Glenn Hubbard – Hubbard was Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of the Treasury from 1991 to 1993.
From February 2001 until March 2003, Hubbard was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under President George W. Bush. A supply-side economist, he was instrumental in the design of the 2003 Bush Tax cuts.

Hubbard was interviewed in Charles Ferguson’s Oscar-winning documentary film, Inside Job (2010), discussing his advocacy of deregulation as chief economic advisor to the Bush Administration.  In the interview, Ferguson asks Hubbard, in addition to his position as Dean of Columbia Business School, to enumerate the firms from whom he receives outside income as an advisory board member in the context of possible conflict of interest. Hubbard, previously cooperative, declines to answer and threatens to end the interview:

“Mr. FERGUSON: Well, the entire interview was fairly contentious, as you can imagine. It surprised me somewhat to realize that these people were not used to being challenged, that they’d never been questioned about this issue before. They clearly expected to be deferred to by me and I think by everybody.”

I remember this interview quite well, an already frosty room turned ice cold at this point.  I remember thinking, “what an ass” and wanting to throw a shoe at the TV to make him talk.  It was really quite telling and you can read the interview of Craig Ferguson by Melissa Block of NPR here:

http://www.npr. org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130272396

Professor N. Gregory Mankiw – Mankiw is an American macroeconomist and Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Mankiw is known in academia for his work on New Keynesian economics.

From 2003 to 2005, Mankiw was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush. In 2006, he became an economic adviser to Mitt Romney and has continued during Romney’s 2012 presidential bid.  Mankiw is the source of some criticism from several sources as outlined below.

Benefits of Outsourcing
Several controversies arose from CEA’s(Council of Economic Advisors) February 2004 Economic Report to the President.  In a press conference, Mankiw spoke of the gains from free trade, noting that outsourcing of jobs by U.S. companies is “probably a plus for the economy in the long run.” While this reflected mainstream economic analysis, it was criticized by many politicians who drew a link between outsourcing and the still-slow recovery of the U.S. labor market in early 2004.

Service Versus Manufacturing
Controversy also arose from a rhetorical question posed by the report (and repeated by Mankiw in a speech about the report): “when a fast-food restaurant sells a hamburger, is it providing a service or combining inputs to manufacture a product?” The intended point was that the distinction between manufacturing jobs and service industry jobs is somewhat arbitrary and therefore a poor basis for policy. Even though the issue was not raised in the report, a news account led to criticism that the Administration was seeking to cover up job losses in manufacturing by redefining jobs such as cooking hamburgers as manufacturing.  Now that would not surprise most sane people in the least.  We all know how well Bush monetary policies worked out in the end.

2011 Student Walkout
On November 2, 2011, some 60 to 70 of the students in his Economics 10 class walked out of his lecture. Before leaving, they handed Mankiw an open letter critical of his course, saying in part:

we find a course that espouses a specific—and limited—view of economics that we believe perpetuates problematic and inefficient systems of economic inequality in our society today … Economics 10 makes it difficult for subsequent economics courses to teach effectively as it offers only one heavily skewed perspective rather than a solid grounding on which other courses can expand. … Harvard graduates play major roles in the financial institutions and in shaping public policy around the world. If Harvard fails to equip its students with a broad and critical understanding of economics, their actions are likely to harm the global financial system. The last five years of economic turmoil have been proof enough of this.

The students concluded their letter by stating they would instead be attending the Occupy Boston demonstration then under way.  After seeing the move Inside Job and listening to the Professors talk about selling their services to various financial institutions, these students most likely did the right thing.

Former Senator Jim Talent – Senator Talent does not have a remarkable background.  He does not, however, appear to have any financial background.  There were some issues with campaign donations and he has flip flopped on some issues but basically he seems harmless, at least at first glance.  There could be something in his background, but the only real drawback with him is his lack of financial background.  He is a born again Presbyterian and a Pro-lifer.

Former Congressman Vin Weber – Weber retired from congress in 1992, two years before the “Republican revolution”, after being caught up in the House banking scandal which revealed the bank had repeatedly paid overdrafts for 125 checks on his account.  However, as secretary of the House Republican caucus and key adviser to incoming Speaker Newt Gingrich, he was considered one of the architects of the Republican’s success in 1994. He was briefly a commentator on NPR the following year speaking on developments in Congress after the Republicans took control of the House, providing commentary on the “revolution” he had helped create. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting reported that Weber frequently offered his opinions on NPR about health care issues, but never revealed that he was a paid lobbyist for several health insurance giants.

He is a member of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and was one of the signers of the PNAC Letter sent to US President Bill Clinton dated January 26, 1998. (PNAC advocated for the “removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power”) along with Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and 29 other notable Republicans.  Of course you did not think we would find completely clean people two in a row did you?  Again, no financial background but perhaps his PNAC affiliation?  Not sure but the economy team seems awfully weak.

Foreign Policy and National Security Advisory Team

At first, I was not going to list them all but as I looked up each name, I found issues I thought others would find interesting, if not a bit scary.  As I was going through this list some stuck out others did not but when I checked most, the decision was made to include them as a result of the info sound.  Of course you can look up any of them separately and I would encourage you to do so.

Cofer Black – CIA Counterterrorism, Director of Counterterrorism under George Tenet, Chairman Black Water. Notable Info: According to an internal CIA report on the performance of the agency prior to the 9/11 attacks, Cofer Black was criticized for not passing on information to the FBI that al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar had subsequently entered the United States. In addition, the 9/11 Commission found that while Black testified before Congress’s Joint Inquiry into 9/11 that the FBI had access to information on the two hijackers, the 9/11 Commission found no such evidence of this claim. At a meeting with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and others on July 10, “Richard”(CIA operative) predicted a “spectacular” terrorist attack against US interests “in the coming weeks or months” … “Multiple and simultaneous attacks are possible”. After the meeting, “Rich and Cofer congratulated each other”, feeling that at last the CIA had gotten the full attention of the administration.  Sadly that was not to be the case.  Cofer Black, however, appears to be a bit on the wild side when talking about other operatives or terrorist members.  In speaking with the Russians about Afghanistan he said, “We’re going to kill them,” Black said. “We’re going to put their heads on sticks. We’re going to rock their world.”  Pretty scary guy.  And we wonder why our service men and women have committed some of the acts they have.

Walid Phares – From the Mother Jones article(link below)

“Co-chair of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s Middle East advisory group, has a long résumé. College professor. Author. Political pundit. Counterterrorism expert. But there’s one chapter of his life that you won’t find on his CV: He was a high ranking political official in a sectarian religious militia responsible for massacres during Lebanon’s brutal, 15-year civil war.”

During the 1980s, Phares, a Maronite Christian, trained Lebanese militants in ideological beliefs justifying the war against Lebanon’s Muslim and Druze factions, according to former colleagues. Phares, they say, advocated the hard-line view that Lebanon’s Christians should work toward creating a separate, independent Christian enclave. A photo obtained by Mother Jones shows him conducting a press conference in 1986 for the Lebanese Forces, an umbrella group of Christian militias that has been accused of committing atrocities. He was also a close adviser to Samir Geagea, a Lebanese warlord who rose from leading hit squads to running the Lebanese Forces.

Since fleeing to the United States in 1990, when the Syrians took over Lebanon, Phares has reinvented himself as a counterterrorism and national security expert, traveling comfortably between official circles and the GOP’s anti-Muslim wing. In a little over two decades, he’s gone from training Lebanese militants to teaching American law enforcement and intelligence officials about the Middle East, and from advising Lebanese warlords to counseling a man who could be the next president of the United States.

“I can’t think of any earlier instance of a [possible presidential] adviser having held a comparable formal position with a foreign organization,” says Paul Pillar, a 20-year veteran of the CIA and a professor at Georgetown’s Center for Peace and Security Studies. “It should raise eyebrows any time someone in a position to exert behind-the-scenes influence on a US leader has ties to a foreign entity that are strong enough for foreign interests, and not just US interests, to determine the advice being given.”

And yes, that pic is Mitt and Walid.  For further information and the complete story, I refer you to the link below.  Worth reading.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/walid-phares-mitt-romney-lebanese-forces

Christopher Bancroft Burnham – Appointed Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations for Management by Kofi Annan on June 1, 2005, after serving as acting Under Secretary of State for Management for Condoleezza Rice.  He also served as Assistant Secretary of State for Resource Management and Chief Financial Officer of the State Department for General Colin Powell. Burnham joined the Department of State in September 2001.  He served as Treasurer of Connecticut, where he served from 1995 – 1997. Within two years he restructured the state pension funds, performance went from being the worst performing in the country to the top 25%, where it remained for eight years.   Sounds like he should be on the economic policy team….

Michael Chertoff – Chertoff was the second Secretary of Homeland Security(DHS) under President George W. Bush and co-author of the USA PATRIOT Act. He previously served as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, as a federal prosecutor, and as assistant U.S. Attorney General.  In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, most of the criticism was directed toward FEMA, but DHS was criticized as well for its lack of preparation.  Chertoff was the Bush administration’s point man for pushing the comprehensive immigration reform bill, a measure that stalled in the Senate in June 2007.  In 2008 it became public that the housekeeping company Chertoff had hired to clean his house employed illegal immigrants.  So, while trying to act tough on immigration, Chertoff was employing the illegals he was railing against.  Chertoff was also the architect of the “chip” data id that at some point is going to be required in all 50 states on driver’s licenses.  Nevada had run a pilot program back in 2009 but I am not sure how it is going.

Eliot Cohen – To give you an idea of this man’s reputation, Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com described Cohen as “extremist, as neoconservative and warmonger as it gets”. This is one person I would recommend you read his Wiki.  He seems to have an obsession with Iraq, Iran and bombing them to hell.  So far, this man scares me the most and to let him wander back in to the White House would be a serious mistake.  Please do read his wiki he would be an article all on his own:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_A._Cohen

Norm Coleman – We all know who Coleman is and he knows who Senator Al Franken is, he won the Senate seat from Coleman after a long drawn out re-count in which Coleman wasted a lot of money and time. In college, Coleman was a liberal Democrat and was actively involved in the anti-war movement of the early 1970s. He once was suspended for leading a sit-in protest. He ran for student senate and opined in the school newspaper that his fellow students should vote for him because he knew that, “These conservative kids don’t fuck or get high like we do (purity, you know)… Already the cries of motherhood, apple pie, and Jim Buckley reverberate through the halls of the Student Center. Everyone watch out, the 1950s bobby-sox generation is about to take over.”  He remained a Democrat until 1996 at which time he announced a switch to the Republican party.   Coleman has a very divirsified past, going from very liberal to conservative over the course of his life.  He was actually one of three conservatives who chastised the Bush administration for their lack of effective response to a number of issues.  His is another wiki I would suggest you read when you have time.  I actually found some humanness in Coleman.

John Danilovich – Ambassador John Danilovich, head of The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). He discussed how the MCC brought accountability and safeguards to international development aid.  I did not read the entire report the bi-partisan commission delivered but the main theme was to repair the U.S. image in the world. Ambassador John J. Danilovich had a distinguished career of more than thirty years in both the public and private sectors. Prior to his appointment by President Bush as CEO, Ambassador Danilovich served as the American Ambassador to the Republic of Costa Rica from 2001 to 2004, and then Ambassador to the Federative Republic of Brazil. Ambassador Danilovich is a businessman and private investor with a strong background in foreign affairs.

Michael Vincent Hayden – Is a retired United States Air Force four-star general and former Director of the National Security Agency and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. From April 21, 2005–May 26, 2006 he was the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, a position which once made him “the highest-ranking military intelligence officer in the armed forces.” He was Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) from 1999–2005. During his tenure as Director, the longest in the history of the agency, he oversaw the controversial NSA surveillance of technological communications between persons in the United States and alleged foreign terrorist groups, which resulted in the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy. On May 30, 2006 and again the following day at the CIA lobby with President George W. Bush in attendance, Hayden was sworn in as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.  May 2006, USA Today reported that, under Hayden’s leadership, the NSA created a domestic telephone call database. During his nomination hearings, Hayden defended his actions to Senator Russ Feingold and others, stating that he had relied upon legal advice that the White House order to build the database was supported by Article Two of the United States Constitution for executive branch powers (in which the President must “take care that the laws be faithfully executed”).  He says was advised that overriding legislative branch statutes forbidding warrantless surveillance of domestic calls, which included the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was not against the law. Previously, this action would have required a warrant from a FISA court. The stated purpose of the database was to eavesdrop on international communications between persons within the U.S. and individuals and groups overseas in order to locate terrorists.

Hayden also championed the Trailblazer Project, a “transformation” project with a large Information Technology component. The project was criticized by several NSA staffers for not including privacy protections for US citizens and for being a waste of money. The critics included Diane S Roark, of the House Intelligence Committee, NSA workers Thomas Andrews Drake, Binney, Wiebe, and Loomis, and others. Hayden severely rebuked these critics and several quit in protest. After investigations by the NSA inspector general, the DOD inspector general, and Congress, Trailblazer was shut down.  I am sure the Romney campaign would draw on his military excellence however what he has done since is certainly suspect if only for the fact he did not challenge the White House on warrentless wiretaps.

Eric Edelman – Was a former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey (2003–2005), former U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Finland (1998–2001), and former Principal Deputy Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs (2001–2003). A career Foreign Service Officer, Edelman entered the Senior Foreign Service in 1992.  He retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in May 2009 and is a visiting scholar at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and Distinguished Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Edelman was appointed to the position of Undersecretary of Defense for Policy on August 9, 2005, via recess appointment by George W. Bush, after his nomination was stalled in the Senate and yes it was a Republican controlled Congress.  You hear that Republicans?  GW did recess appointments under your control.

In July 2007, Edelman attracted media attention for criticizing Senator Hillary Clinton, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. In a private letter to Senator Clinton in response to a request made to the Pentagon in May 2007 for plans for withdrawing troops from combat in Iraq, Edelman rebuffed her request and wrote:

Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia.

The Associated Press (AP) described his criticisms as “stinging”. According to the AP, Edelman’s comments were: “…unusual, particularly because it was directed at a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.”  The Associated Press pointed out that fellow committee member Republican Senator Richard Lugar had also called for discussions of withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, but had escaped Edelman’s criticism. Clinton said she was “shocked by the timeworn tactic of once again impugning the patriotism of any of us who raise serious questions about the Iraq war.” In a letter to Secretary of Defense Gates, Senator Clinton reiterated her request for plans on troop redeployment and protested Edelman’s criticism and asked if Edelman’s letter accuratedly reflected Gates’ views as Secretary of Defense.  In reference to Clinton’s comments, Secretary of Defense Gates  said “I believe that congressional debate on Iraq has been constructive and appropriate.”
So here you have what would otherwise look like a stellar career marred by either party or gender bias.  Fits right in with the current party.

Kerry Murphy Healey – was the 70th Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts. She served from 2003 to 2007 with Governor Mitt Romney. She was the 2006 Republican nominee for Governor of Massachusetts, losing to Democrat Deval Patrick in November 2006. She currently serves as Foreign Policy Coordinator and Special Advisor on the Romney for President Campaign. Healey was also elected as the Republican National Committeewoman for the state of Massachusetts.

In 2008, Healey was appointed to the Department of State’s Executive Committee of the Public-Private Partnership for Justice Reform in Afghanistan by Condoleezza Rice and was reappointed in 2009 by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Healey chaired the PPP’s Afghan Women Lawyers’ Training Conference held in California and Washington, DC, and in 2010, she led the Afghan Defense Lawyer Training Program in Boston and Washington, DC.  While she has had a distinguised career in the DOS, her campaign style is nasty.

She ran against Patrick Devall and ran ads against him for doing the work he was required to do as a criminal attorney. She also criticized Patrick for having written to the Massachusetts Parole Board on behalf of Benjamin LaGuer, who proclaims innocence for a 1983 sexual assault, and for corresponding with the inmate. During the heat of the campaign two unidentified men visited LaGuer in prison and allegedly offered him $100,000 if he would turn that correspondence over to them. Deval Patrick also criticized Healey’s campaign for leaking details of the 1993 rape of Patrick’s sister by her husband. The Healey campaign denied any involvement in the leak, and in turn accused Patrick of initiating a “smear campaign” over the issue.

She denied any knowledge of the incidents but with the knowledge of her nasty campaigning strategies, I would tend to believe Governor Deval.

Kim R. Holmes, Ph.D. – Is a foreign and defense policy expert in the United States. A former assistant secretary of state, he currently serves as the Vice President of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation and as director of its Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies.  His published works include Liberty’s Best Hope: American Leadership in the 21st Century (2008) and the annual Heritage/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom.  Except for the fact he has been deeply involved with Heritage Foundation, he has a distinguished career and excellent reputation in foreign affairs.

Robert G Joseph – Is a senior scholar at the National Institute for Public Policy and professor at Missouri State University. He was the United States Special Envoy for Nuclear Nonproliferation, with ambassadorial rank. Prior to this post, Dr. Joseph was the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, a position he held until January 24, 2007.  Ambassador Joseph is well known for being instrumental in creating the Proliferation Security Initiative and as the architect of the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism. He was also the US chief negotiator to Libya in 2003 who convinced the Libyans to give up their WMD programs. He also recently authored a book describing his experience in negotiating with Libya entitled “Countering WMD.”

Robert Kagan – An American historian, author and foreign policy commentator at the Brookings Institution. He is a co-founder of the now-defunct political organization Project for the New American Century.  More recently, his book The World America Made has been publicly endorsed by US President Barack Obama, and its theme was referenced in his 2012 State of the Union Address.
In 1983, Robert Kagan was foreign policy advisor to New York Representative Jack Kemp. Between 1984 and 1986, he worked at the State Department Policy Planning Staff and was a speechwriter for Secretary of State George P. Shultz. From 1986 to 1988, he served in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs at the State Department. In 1997 he co-founded and served as a director for the now-defunct Project for the New American Century.  This alone, disqualifies him in my opinion.  PNAC was the blueprint for war in Iraq no matter what Iraq did or did not do.  In my opinion it was an evil plan.  Otherwise he has had a stellar career.  Maybe something went haywire for a couple of years.

John Lehman – Is an American investment banker and writer who served as Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration and in 2003–04 was a member of the 9/11 Commission.  Lehman currently serves on the National Security Advisory Council for the Center for Security Policy (CSP), and on the board of trustees for the think tank Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI). Lehman is also a member of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States and has signed some policy letters produced by the Project for the New American Century. He also served as an advisor to Sen. John McCain for the 2008.  Again, the PNAC pops up.  One or two may not be a big deal but it appears Mitt is loading up with most of the signatories.

Pierre Prosper –  Was a Deputy District Attorney for Los Angeles County, California from 1989 to 1994. His last two years in this position were spent in the Hardcore Gang Division of the Bureau of Special Operations where he prosecuted gang-related murders. From 1994 to 1996, he was an Assistant United States Attorney for the Central District of California in Los Angeles. He was assigned to the Narcotics Section, Drug Enforcement Task Force, where he investigated and prosecuted major international drug cartels.

From 1996 to late 1998, Prosper served as a war crimes prosecutor for the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Appointed lead trial attorney, Prosper successfully prosecuted the matter of the Prosecutor against Jean-Paul Akayesu, the first-ever case of genocide under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. In the 14-month trial, he won additional life-sentence convictions for crimes against humanity and broke new ground in international law by convincing the Tribunal to recognize rape committed in time of conflict as an act of genocide and a crime against humanity.

Prosper served as a career prosecutor at the U.S. Department of Justice where he was Special Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division in 1999. From 1999 to 2001, Prosper was detailed to the State Department where he served as the Special Counsel and Policy Adviser to the previous Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues.

Prosper was nominated by President George W. Bush on May 16, 2001 to become the second U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues. After being confirmed by the U.S. Senate, he was sworn in on July 13, 2001. He served until late 2005.

Currently, Prosper holds the position Of Counsel in the Los Angeles office of Arent Fox LLP, and serves as a trustee on the Boston College Board of Trustees.  Too bad he did not stay long enough to prosecute Bush/Cheney.  The link below has information regarding Arent Fox LLC questioning whether Big Pharma had something to do with Mitt’s sudden dislike of  RomneyCare or ObamaCare.

http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/archives/2011/02/01/mitt-romney-takes-cash-from-arent-fox-pharmaceuticals-lobbyists/

Mitchell B. Reiss – is a senior American diplomat who became the 27th president of Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland on July 1, 2010. He served as Director of Policy Planning at the United States Department of State under Colin Powell. He also served as the United States Special Envoy for Northern Ireland, with the diplomatic rank of Ambassador, until stepping down in 2007.  He was also selected to be a White House Fellow and was assigned to the National Security Council, where he worked both for Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell.

Daniel Samuel Senor – Dan is a founding partner of Rosemont Capital LLC, and Rosemont Solebury Capital Management. He is also a Fox News contributor and a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal among other publications. He is co-author the book Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, about the economy of Israel and globalization in the Middle East. Senor is most noted for his former position as chief spokesperson for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

Dov Zakheim – During the 2000 U.S. Presidential election campaign, Zakheim served as a foreign policy advisor to George W. Bush as part of a group led by Condoleezza Rice that called itself The Vulcans. He was part of the Project for the New American Century. He was an Adjunct Scholar of the Heritage Foundation, a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and published over 200 articles and monographs on defense issues.

He was then appointed as Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) from 2001 in George W. Bush administration, and served in this capacity until April 2004. During his term as Comptroller, he was tasked to help track down the Pentagon’s 2.3 trillion dollars. worth of unaccounted transactions.  In 2008 he was appointed by President Bush as a member of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Justice Advisory Committee

Judge Robert Bork – Bork is an American legal scholar who has advocated the judicial philosophy of originalism. Bork formerly served as a Yale Law School professor, Solicitor General, Acting Attorney General, and judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In 1987, he was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan, but the Senate rejected his nomination.  Currently, Bork is a lawyer, law professor, and bestselling author.  President Reagan nominated Bork for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court on July 1, 1987. A hotly contested United States Senate debate over Bork’s nomination ensued. Opposition was partly fueled by strong opposition of civil and women’s rights groups concerned with Bork’s opposition to the authority claimed by the federal government to impose standards of voting fairness upon the states (at his confirmation hearings for the position of Solicitor General, he supported the rights of Southern states to impose a poll tax), and his stated desire to roll back civil rights decisions of the Warren and Burger courts. Bork is one of only three Supreme Court nominees, along with William Rehnquist and Samuel Alito, to ever be opposed by the American Civil Liberties Union. Bork was also criticized for being an “advocate of disproportionate powers for the executive branch of Government, almost executive supremacy”, most notably, according to critics, for his role in the Saturday Night Massacre, albeit not in a completely willing role.  Following Bork’s nomination to the Court, Sen. Ted Kennedy took to the Senate floor with a strong condemnation of Bork declaring:

“Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is—and is often the only—protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy … President Reagan is still our president. But he should not be able to reach out from the muck of Irangate, reach into the muck of Watergate and impose his reactionary vision of the Constitution on the Supreme Court and the next generation of Americans. No justice would be better than this injustice.”

Television advertisements narrated by Gregory Peck attacked Bork as an extremist. Kennedy’s speech successfully fueled widespread public skepticism of Bork’s nomination. The rapid response to Kennedy’s “Robert Bork’s America” speech stunned the Reagan White House, and the accusations went unanswered for two and a half months.

To pro-choice legal groups, Bork’s originalist views and his belief that the Constitution does not contain a general “right to privacy” were viewed as a clear signal that, should he become a Justice on the Supreme Court, he would vote to reverse the Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. Accordingly, a large number of groups mobilized to press for Bork’s rejection, and the resulting 1987 Senate confirmation hearings became an intensely partisan battle. Bork was faulted for his bluntness before the committee, including his criticism of the reasoning underlying Roe v. Wade.

Bork, unhappy with his treatment in the nomination process, resigned his appellate-court judgeship in 1988.

Professor May Ann Glendon – Glendon has served as the United States Ambassador to the Holy See (2008–2009), and is the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She teaches and writes on bioethics, comparative constitutional law, property, and human rights in international law. She is (severely) pro-life and “writes forcefully against the expansion of abortion rights.”

In 1994, she was a signer of Evangelicals and Catholics Together, an ecumenical document aimed at rapprochement between Catholics and Evangelicals. Glendon became the first female President of the Roman Catholic Church’s Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, when she was appointed by Pope John Paul II on March 9, 2004.

In 1995, she was the Vatican representative to the international 1995 Beijing Conference on Women sponsored by the United Nations, where she contested the use of condoms for the prevention of HIV and AIDS. “The Holy See in no way endorses contraception or the use of condoms, either as a family planning measure or in HIV/AIDS prevention programs.”

The National Law Journal named her one of the “Fifty Most Influential Women Lawyers in America” in 1998.

Glendon was appointed by President Bush to the President’s Council on Bioethics. Her nomination as United States Ambassador to the Holy See was announced on 5 November 2007.  The U.S. Senate voted to confirm her on December 19, 2007. She presented her Letters of Credence to Pope Benedict XVI on 29 February 2008, and resigned her office effective January 19, 2009.[5]

Glendon was selected by the University of Notre Dame as the 2009 recipient of the prestigious Laetare Medal but declined the award due to the university’s controversial decision to host Barack Obama as its commencement speaker and bestow upon him an honorary degree.  In light of Obama’s strong pro-choice policies, Glendon considered Notre Dame’s decision to be in violation of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ 2004 pronouncement that Catholic institutions should not give “awards, honors, or platforms” to “those who act in defiance of [Catholic] fundamental moral principles.” Glendon also felt that the university was implicitly trying to use her acceptance speech to give the appearance of balance to the event and expressed concern about the “ripple effect” Notre Dame’s disregard of the USCCB pronouncement is having on the nation’s other Catholic schools.

She later received an award from the National Right to Life Committee at its Pro-Life Awards Dinner in October.

Glendon writes and serves on the advisory council for First Things, an ecumenical journal that encourages a religiously informed philosophy for the ordering of society.  Glendon supported Mitt Romney in the 2008 presidential election.

“What is clearly ‘old-fashioned’ today is the old feminism of the 1970s — with its negative attitudes toward men, marriage and motherhood, and its rigid party line on abortion.” – Glendon

Richard Wiley – Wiley served as Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from March 8, 1970 -October 12, 1977 where he advocated increased competition and lessened regulation in the communications field. Wiley played a pivotal role in the development of HDTV in the United States, serving from 1987 to 1995 as Chairman of the FCC’s Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service.

Clearly, Romney is recycling past Washington DC insiders so if he tries to claim he is going to change DC as an outsider he is the only one who would be the outsider.  I will be reviewing Romney’s campaign staff ongoing and as I hear of staff that is not on the published list I pulled from the internet, I will be adding that staff.  Eric Fehrenberg(sp) is one such person.  I learned of his position this past week but he was not listed on the report I found.