Former top Bush administration official charged with contempt

Word from Washington that a former top Bush administration official has been charged with contempt of Congress for allegedly mistreating employees and deleting files from an office computer in 2006 is reassuring to those of us still waiting for the Obama government to fix the worst excesses of the previous administration. Federal prosecutors filed the criminal charge against Scott Bloch, the former head of the Office of Special Council, which ironically is responsible for protecting federal employees who report improper activities from retaliation, according to the Reuters international news service. Bloch had been under investigation for five years, and FBI agents seized his office computers and subpoenaed all 17 employees in a 2008 raid. Bloch resigned later that year. The charges apparently stem from Bloch's decision in 2006 to hire an outside contractor to purge a virus from his computer instead of using in-house technicians, and files mysteriously were deleted from his and other computers. The U.S. House of Representatives has been conducting its own investigation of that and of reports that Bloch had set up a separate office in Detroit to exile employees who displeased him. Bloch told the House Oversight Committee that he engaged the contractor to remove the virus. But documents filed by federal prosecutors in U.S. District Court on Thursday allege that Bloch "unlawfully and willfully withheld pertinent information from the committee" about the erasure. during an interview with the panel in March 2008, according to a criminal information filing by prosecutors in U.S. District Court. Such filings are typically used in plea agreements in which a defendant pleads guilty, Reuters said. Block's attorney, William Sullivan, would not confirm that a plea agreement was in place but told Reuters that was glad the investigation was over. Bloch had been appointed to a five-year term with the Office of Special Counsel in 2004 but ran into friction with the White House when he opened investigations into allegations that Bush adviser Karl Rove and other officials had used federal agencies for political activities, and whether laws were violated in the White House's firing of eight U.S. attorneys in 2006, Reuters said. Bloch had been a personnel lawyer at the Faith-Based and Community Initiatives office of the U.S. Justice Department before the appointment, Reuters said.

Obama decision on nuclear power is potentially volatile compromise

Certainly being president of all the people means having to do things that may disappoint your supporters but benefit the country as a whole. That, certainly, is behind U.S. President Barack Obama's repeated entreaties to the Republican Party minorities in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, despite his Democratic Party's majorities in both. And that probably explains his thinking Monday, when an unnamed official told the Reuters international news service that he would announce an $8.3 billion loan guarantee to help the Southern Co. of Atlanta build two nuclear reactors. But there should be, one would hope, a limit to the number of basic principles you're willing to surrender. Healthcare reform appears to have been inadvisedly compromised away, so expansion of the civilian nuclear power industry would have been a very good place to start holding the line. There's a good reason no nuclear power plants have been built in the United States for 30 years -- even besides the nearly incalculable damage that a major accident could cause, nuclear waste disposal technology is not now, even after all these years, and obviously may never be ready for prime time. Yet Obama plans to put the federal taxing power behind a utility company to help it build two more reactors at an existing two-reactor nuclear plant outside Atlanta. Obama is backing nuclear power as an environmentally desirable alternative to fossil fuel plants, even though his decision will likely damage his pro-environment credentials. The loan guarantees will enable the Southern Co. to finance 70 percent of the new construction, which is expected to cost as much as $9 billion when the plants are completed in 2016 or 2017.

There's good news and bad news in House energy bill

U.S. President Barack Obama applauded Sunday the passage of an historic energy bill by the House of Representatives aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and moving the United States away from oil dependence, according to the New York Times. The bill is historic because it would, if passed by the Senate and signed by the president, begin turning the United States from being one of the world's largest emitters of the gasses blamed for global warming and from its profligate use of fossil fuels. The proposal includes a cap-and-trade program to encourage emissions-reduction and support for solar energy and wind power, the Times said. "I think it's fair to say that over the first six month, we've seen more progress on shifting us away from dependence on foreign oil and fossil fuels than at any time in several decades," Obama told a group of reporters in the Oval Office, citing his administration's raising of automobile mileage standards and including support for energy research and home weatherization in the economic stimulus bill. But Obama took issue with one provision in the bill passed bythe House that could impose tariffs on countries that refuse to adopt limits on greenhouse gas emissions. "At a time when the economy worldwide is still in deep recession and we've seen a significant drop in global trade, I think we have to be very careful about sending any protectionist signals out there," Obama said. Okay, the president still sees the big picture on the economy. The best way to rein in the uncivilized regimes out there is by getting them engaged in the world economy -- there's enough money to be made out there for everyone, assuming the recession ends. Look at how it has been working with China. Instead of remaining a belligerent enemy, China has greatly benefitted from engagement and is working with the United States and the West on many issues. It's hard to remember the last time Beijing railed against U.S. "hegemony" -- the name the old Chinese Communists had for Washington's use of economic influence. And it's certainly a lot better than worldwide saber-rattling with nuclear arms, like we're seeing on a smaller scale with North Korea and Iran. But will Obama veto the bill if the Senate does not remove the tariff provision before it gets to him? He doesn't seem to have any choice, and is most likely working behind the scenes to make sure it doesn't come to that. Of course, it would have been nice if he had spoken equally eloquently about removing provisions from the bill that offer additional support for nuclear power and so-called "clean coal" technology. Nuclear power is simply too dangerous to depend on, and burning coal on a larger scale has catastrophic environmental consequences. It's far better, as Obama did say, to put the most energy into safe, renewable energy resources.