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Former FEMA head Michael Brown complained to NBC's Brian Williams on his "Nightly News" show that he was "hung out to dry" by President Bush. "As one of the president's appointee," Brown said, "I realized that I would have to fall on my sword for the president...and I did, but I didn't realize that he would leave me on the battlefield." Brown said also that "he had wished he had told Americans that Katrina "was the worst disaster the country had ever faced" instead of relying on the "talking points" supplied.

President Bush is requiring Cabinet members to spend several hours a week at the White House compound, a move top aides say eases coordination with government agencies but one seen by some analysts as fresh evidence of the White House's tightening grip over administration policy. Under a directive instituted by Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. at the start of Bush's second term, Cabinet secretaries spend as many as four hours a week working out of an office suite set up for them at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House. There, they meet with presidential...

One of the mistakes Democrats made during the 2004 election (and which they continue to make now as they grope about blindly for someone to provide a desperately needed shot of real leadership as Chairman of the DNC) was to categorize people who voted for George W. Bush in very broad-brush, single-issue terms. Now the Democrat Party is, if nothing else, a coalition of single-issue voter groups, and so it's perhaps not surprising that Dems, projecting their own mindset, see red-staters in this way. It would seem as though Democrats can't believe that anyone who voted for George W. Bush...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 - President Bush readily accepted Bernard B. Kerik's decision to withdraw his nomination as homeland security secretary after the White House quickly concluded on Friday evening that it would be impossible for him to win confirmation for a post that supervises enforcement of the nation's immigration laws if he had had immigration problems in his own household, White House officials said on Saturday. Only hours earlier on Friday, Mr. Kerik informed the administration that, contrary to assurances he had given the White House counsel's office before the president nominated him on Dec. 3, a nanny he had...

Norman Mineta should have been the first to leave Bush's Cabinet, not one of the few asked to stay! The holiday travel period is a good reminder of just how far we still need to go when it comes to airline security in a post-9/11 world, and although Mineta’s power has been largely usurped by the Department of Homeland Security, it was he who set the mindset for the post-9/11 world. There have been several significant developments in airline security in the last few months. None bode well. First, what was touted as a passenger profiling system was instituted at...

The White House used the front page of Monday's Washington Post to cashier a Cabinet member. A story headlined "Bush to Change Economic Team" said: "One senior administration official said Treasury Secretary John W. Snow can stay as long as he wants, provided it is not very long." Obviously the office will need filling before "very long." The president should fill it with Alan Greenspan. He has headed the Federal Reserve System under four presidents — since August 1987. Now he is needed elsewhere. Having been in Washington most of the 30 years since he became chairman of President Gerald...

All right, now, folks, you're going to have to calm down out there. You're just going to have to calm down out there. I am being inundated with e-mails, "What does it mean, these cabinet resignations? Oh no, Rush, how can Bush get anything done with all of these cabinet leaders? Oh, Rush, what's happening, it's all falling apart." Folks, take a time-out here. You know, do what the New York Jets should have done yesterday afternoon with 52 seconds left, let's take a time-out, don't wait till there's eight seconds. What a horrible bunch of clock management that game...

President Bush keeps his cabinet and other top people on a short leash--or tries to. Here's why some appointees succeed and others don't--plus, how the current Bushies have done so far. AFTER THE OVAL OFFICE, the most impressive chamber in the White House is theCabinet Room. High-backed leather chairs, each engraved with the name of a Cabinet secretary, ring a massive oval mahogany table. The men and women who oversee the vast federal bureaucracy can sit there and gaze out at the Rose Garden. If appearances count, this should be the power center of the executive branch. But as students...