WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2010


KLMNO


EZ SU THE FED PAGE Rice is silent on Angelina, but not on Assange


stomach and after a few glasses of wine.” Well,maybe Rice is right.


Dept. of Next Moves The chairman of the Joint


AL KAMEN In the Loop


F


ormer secretary of state Condoleezza Rice looked somewhat befuddled


Monday as she co-hosted the daytime television talk show “The View.” She nodded and smiled as the regular yakkers debated the propriety of comedian and talk show host Chelsea Handler’s recent stand- up performance, in which she launched a jaw-dropping, foul- mouthed trashing of Angelina Jolie. Panel regularWhoopi


Goldberg said Handler was upset at Jolie for stealing Brad Pitt fromChelsea’s pal Jennifer Aniston and breaking up their marriage.Whoopi opined that Handler was way out of line— after all, themarriage broke up about six years ago. Rice—her new book is


“Extraordinary, Ordinary People: AMemoir of Family”— has appeared on the show before, but she just didn’t seem eager to engage in the lively debate on thismega-important issue. But Rice warmed up when the


topic shifted toWikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, decrying the damage the gusher of leaks will have on U.S. diplomacy—“People aren’t going to talk to us,” she said— and urging that Assange be harshly dealt with. (The actual leaker, an Army private first class, is in amilitary brig.) She thought theWhite House


appropriately referred the matter to the Justice Department for a review of possible charges, adding: “I hope they hurry up.” Another panelist asked Rice


whether she agreed with former House speaker Newt Gingrich’s comments Sunday on the issue. Gingrich—though he went out


CRAIG FRITZ FOR THE WASHINGTON POST Bill Richardson, man of many roles, is about to exit theNewMexicoGovernor’sMansion but has newirons in the fire in scenic Santa Fe.


of his way to commend Secretary of State Hillary RodhamClinton—implied that the leaks reflected badly on the administration. Rice was sympathetic to the


Obama team. “This could have happened to anybody,” she said twice. Her conclusion and advice for


diplomats? “Reading some of this, I also thought,” she said, that “people talk toomuch in these cables. You don’t have to write everything you think. Some restraint . . . would be helpful.”


Much depends on dinner Speaking of writing toomuch,


the cables domention seemingly irrelevant haute—and not so haute—cuisine. Yet food and wine can be


important factors in diplomacy and decision-making. In a 2009 cable fromBuenos Aires, for example, we find Argentina’s deputyminister of energy, who everyone thought was due to be fired by the late President Nestor Kirchner, saved by fine trout. “Kirchner did not speak to


himfor two weeks, until he unexpectedly called himasking for some trout for a dinner that Kirchner was hosting,” the cable said. The deputyminister, we’re told, “had a reputation for knowing where to get the best trout in Rio Gallegos.” He got the fish, and “two days later Kirchner invited himfor coffee . . . greeted himwarmly, thanked himfor the trout” and shocked everyone “by chatting amiably” with the deputyminister for a


Impeachment case against U.S. judge goes before Senate


Meals, gifts, favors were just business as usual in Louisiana, attorney says


BY BEN EVANS The attorney for an impeached


federal judge on trial before the Senate argued Tuesday that Con- gress is pursuing unconstitution- al charges against his client and would be breaking with two cen- turies of precedent by removing him from office. Jonathan Turley told senators assembled in the chamber for the historic trial that some of the allegations against Judge G. Thomas Porteous are vague or exaggerated. Others, he said, in- volve conduct that occurred be- fore Porteous was appointed to the federal bench. “In the history of this republic,


no one has ever been removed from office on the basis of pre- federal conduct,” Turley said, urg- ing the senators to dismiss some of the most serious charges. The lead House prosecutor,


Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), responded that Porteous engaged in a persistent pattern of corrup- tion throughout his career, before and after his federal service. Al- lowing Porteous, 63, to remain on the bench, Schiff said, would erode public confidence in the courts andmake a mockery of the federal judiciary. “He must be removed,” Schiff


said. The Senate is beginning the


final stage of the case against Porteous, a U.S. District Court judge from Louisiana who could become just the eighth federal


The Federal Worker


Losing friends? Obama won’t find as many federal workers ready to embrace him with tax cuts for the wealthy on top of pay freezes. Federal Diary, B3


Mail dump The vast majority of letter carriers deliver no matter what, but a few bad apples have tossed mail in the trash—or their own pockets. B3


long time. The official “was not fired, and Kirchner did not raise the issue again.” Fish is important in a cable


fromBaku that “profiles the most powerful families in Azerbaijan, both in terms of economic and political power,” and notes that amember of one family “owns and operates the Caspian Fish Company which controls the lucrative (and previously RussianMafia- controlled) Beluga caviar production in Azerbaijan.” A cable last year fromLondon


recounts a dinner there celebrating the 80th anniversary of the Bank of China. A source said that Vice PremierWang Qishan attended, according to the cable, “and that Wang claimed he is allergic to alcohol” but the Brits “had


planned a whiskey dinner.” The British apparently had been “confused . . . because the former head of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority had said he used to go drinking together withWang.” Dinner ratings are also


important for people thinking of going abroad. For example, anyone going to increasingly popular Astana, Kazakhstan, for a weekend would be well advised to be careful about dining at the 23rd-floor revolving restaurant atop a fancy new hotel built by a Chinese oil company. It “provides a spectacular


panorama of Astana and the empty steppe beyond,” the cable says, “but it seems to revolve at varying speeds and sometimes can be a bit too fast on a full


Chiefs of Staff, Adm.Mike Mullen, is off this week to South Korea to tell themwe’re with them. And there’s talk that outgoing NewMexico Gov. Bill Richardsonmay be headed to North Korea next week for a private chat with officials there at the invitation of top people in the nuke crowd. Richardson, a former


ambassador to the United Nations, secretary of energy in the Clinton administration and special envoy to North Korea, has been theremany times. He’s also been, either as a private citizen or government official, to some truly nasty places, including Zaire during the dictatorialMobutu regime, Burma, Afghanistan when the Taliban was in power, and to talk genocidal Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir into releasing a NewMexico journalist and two others. There had been some buzz


recently that former presidential candidate Richardson, who leaves office on Dec. 31,might be in line to become chief of theMotion Picture Association of America, but that apparently was even more idle than the usual gossip. (Although you have to wonder about a guy who would prefer hanging with KimJong Il or Bashir over an evening with Anne Hathaway or Zoe Saldana.) We’re hearing Richardson has


signed up with theWashington Speakers Bureau, which should enable himto put some fine bread on the table. But he’s staying in Santa Fe to set up a center there that will focus on ways to rescue people being held hostage by bad guys and on initiating dialogue with rogue regimes.


kamena@washpost.com


Staff researcher Julie Tate and research editor Alice Crites contributed to this column.


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Judge G. Thomas Porteous, right, ofNewOrleans is accused of engaging in a persistent pattern of corruption throughout his career.


judge to be removed from office. The House voted unanimously


inMarch to bring four articles of impeachmentagainst him.Atwo- thirds Senate vote is needed to convict. The proceeding is just the 16th judicial impeachment trial before the Senate. House prosecutors allege that


Porteous was racking up debt as he struggled with drinking and gambling problems. They say he began accepting cash, meals, trips and other favors from peo- ple with business before his court, beginning as a state judge in the 1980s and continuing after he was appointed to the federal bench by President BillClinton in 1994. During previous evidence-


gathering hearings, two lawyers who once worked with Porteous said they gave him thousands of dollars in cash, including about $2,000 stuffed in an envelope in 1999, just before he decided a major civil case in their client’s favor. They also said they paid for meals, tripsandpart of a bachelor party for one of Porteous’s sons in Las Vegas, including a lap dance at a strip club. “Counsel has taken to calling it


a wedding gift, as if it were a piece of china from the Pottery Barn,” Schiff said of the $2,000 cash gift. “This is at best defense counsel at his most creative.” Another witness, New Orleans


bail bondsman Louis Marcotte, described a long-standing rela- tionship in which Marcotte and his employees routinely took Por- teous to lavish meals at French


Quarter restaurants, repaired his automobiles, washed and filled his cars with gas, and tookhimon trips. In return, Porteous manip- ulated bond amounts for defen- dants to giveMarcotte the highest fees possible, said Marcotte, who served 18 months in prison on related corruption charges. Porteous, who sat with his at-


torneys Tuesday before the cham- ber, also is accused of filing for bankruptcy under a false name and lying to the Senate during his judicial confirmation. Turley has argued that Porte-


ous may have made poor deci- sions but that his actions don’t rise to the “high crimes and mis- demeanor” standard the Consti- tution requires for impeachment. He argues, for example, that


the meals, gifts and favors were business as usual in the legal community of the New Orleans area. And he says other charges are exaggerated, including the bankruptcy filing, which Porte- ous maintains he filed under a false name only to avoid embar- rassing publicity. The impeachment trial is the


first since the 1999 case against Clinton, who was acquitted. Porteous would be the first


judge to be impeached and con- victed since 1989, when two judg- es —Walter Nixon of Mississippi and Alcee L. Hastings of Florida — were removed from office. Hastings went on to win a seat in Congress, where he still serves. The Senate is planning to vote


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