Slobber And Spittle (Archive)

Caption: Mary delivers another opinion on the performance of DoJ.

Image credit: Screenshot of The Outlaw Josey Wales by Cujo359 (See NOTE)



Today's quote of the day is from Mary, whom I and others have publicly begged to do blogging somewhere. She's writing, at least occasionally, at FireDogLake's Emptywheel blog. She wrote this today about the decision by Attorney General Eric Holder, which basically said that it was OK for one of the USA Eight, David Iglesias, to have been fired for political reasons:

4. This, they say, is fine. Seriously. They say there’s nothing DOJ can do about it. It’s no problem for politicians to get DOJ lawyers fired for not being political lapdogs. But to be fair, they then finish up by saying both, “In closing, it is important to emphasize that Attorney General Holder is committed to ensuring that partisan political considerations play no role in the law enforcement decisions of the Department” and (bc that wasn’t really the closing after all) “The Attorney General remains deeply dismayed by the OIG/OPR findings related to politicization of the Department’s actions, and has taken steps to ensure those mistakes will not be repeated.”

HUH? They’ve just said it is perfectly legal for politicians to get USAs who won’t do their political bidding fired by covert contacts with the WH, but Holder is “committed” to ensuring partisan political considerations play no role at DOJ? WTH? I guess if you put those two concepts together and held them in your mind for long, you’d end up committed too.

Final Jeopardy Answer: Something That Doesn’t Obstruct or Impede Justice

Providing yet another talking point on the differences between the Obama Administration and its predecessor, Mary adds:

And now Dannehy and Holder have made that chapter and verse – nothing wrong with firing some prosecutors if they aren’t playing politics. Poor Karl Rove – so much trouble could have been avoided if he had just known that a Democratic administration’s DOJ would take the position that it would be perfectly ok for him to get Bush to fire Fitzgerald (something that apparently made even Buscho lawyers Gonzales and Miers flinch) – no obstruction, no impeding – as long as Rove never tried to “influence” the prosecutor first.

Final Jeopardy Answer: Something That Doesn’t Obstruct or Impede Justice

You haven't experienced a verbal smackdown until you've appeared as the wrong color of blip on Mary's radar.

Hopefully, we'll be seeing more in the future.

NOTE: The Outlaw Josey Wales is a copyrighted work of Warner Bros., The Malpaso Company, and others too numerous to mention. None of these people approved, contributed to, or endorsed this article.

Quite some time ago, back when the Bush Administration suddenly fired eight U.S. Attorneys with what amounted to no explanation whatsoever, I wrote this:

So, the question remains, who really authorized the firings? Clearly, it wasn't Catherine Martin or Harriet Miers. They might have had the authority to fire someone in their own departments, but that's about it. The "juice", to coin a term, needed to fire someone in another department lies elsewhere in the White House.

Who Fired The USA Eight?

It now appears that we have an answer for at least one of those eight USAs, and it's none other than Mr. Douchenozzle himself, as Talking Points Memo relates:

Perhaps the key takeaway from the just released documents on the U.S. attorney firings is this:

Karl Rove claimed recently that he and his staff acted merely as a conduit for passing on concerns about David Iglesias. But it's now clear that Rove's office pushed from 2005 for Iglesias to be canned, and was intimately involved in the decision.

Docs Show Rove Pushed For Iglesias Firing

Rove certainly did have the "juice" (a term used in the documents available at that time, by the way). He was on my short list of suspects, mainly because it had been clear for some time that he was after Iglesias' head, among others. Until now, though, there hadn't really been a paper trail to prove his connection. That is no longer true. Part of that "paper" is apparently an interview former White House Counsel Harriet Meirs had with the House Judiciary committee:

In a June 15 interview with House investigators, former White House Counsel Harriet Miers detailed a remarkable 2006 contact with Karl Rove, then on the road in New Mexico, regarding US Attorney David Iglesias.

Rove, Miers recalled, was "very agitated" about Iglesias, who was later ousted in the Bush Administration's purge of US Attorneys. Rove was getting "barraged" with complains by "political people that were active in New Mexico."

'Very Agitated' Rove Called Miers From New Mexico To Complain About Iglesias

For those just tuning in, the problem with these firings, along with their seemingly abrupt and arbitrary nature, was that in at least the case of five of those USAs, it was alleged that the reason they were fired was because they refused to press bogus vote fraud cases in the interest of enhancing the chances of Republicans in their district. As Miers testified, Iglesias' case was particularly blatant:

President George W. Bush and Karl Rove, the former White House political adviser, both appear to have helped orchestrate the firing of former New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias after receiving numerous complaints from Republican activists that the federal prosecutor would not pursue charges of voter fraud, according to a report on the U.S. attorney purge released Monday by the Justice Department’s internal watchdog.

The 390-page report is the culmination of an 18-month joint investigation by Inspector General Glenn Fine and the head of the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility, H. Marshall Jarrett. Their report concluded that Iglesias’s firing was the most “controversial” and that his dismissal was “engineered” by New Mexico GOP lawmakers Sen. Pete Domenici, Congresswoman Heather Wilson and former White House political adviser Karl Rove over complaints about Iglesias’s refusal to secure indictments in voter fraud cases and in a public corruption case.

Many election integrity experts believe claims of voter fraud are a ploy by Republicans to suppress minorities and poor people from voting. Historically, those groups tend to vote for Democratic candidates. Raising red flags about the integrity of the ballots, experts believe, is an attempt by GOP operatives to swing elections to their candidates as well as an attempt to use the fear of criminal prosecution to discourage individuals from voting in future races.

Bush’s Concerns About Voter Fraud Led To Iglesias’s Firing

What will become of this now is a good question. Certainly, such attempts at meddling shouldn't go uncorrected, but at this point I don't know what can be done.

Perhaps in a year or two we'll be able to answer that question.

Image credit: GWU National Security Archive



The Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) has been reviewing the conduct of attorneys involved in the decision to sanction torture during the Bush Administration, according to a report by Newsweek's Michael Isikoff:

An internal Justice Department report on the conduct of senior lawyers who approved waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics is causing anxiety among former Bush administration officials. H. Marshall Jarrett, chief of the department's ethics watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), confirmed last year he was investigating whether the legal advice in crucial interrogation memos "was consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys." According to two knowledgeable sources who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters, a draft of the report was submitted in the final weeks of the Bush administration. It sharply criticized the legal work of two former top officials—Jay Bybee and John Yoo—as well as that of Steven Bradbury, who was chief of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) at the time the report was submitted, the sources said. (Bybee, Yoo and Bradbury did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

A Torture Report Could Spell Big Trouble For Bush Lawyers

It's too bad they couldn't reach Yoo. I just love listening to smirking sadists justifying their actions.

As befits their name, the OPR is investigating whether the DoJ opinion was, shall we say, fixed:

OPR investigators focused on whether the memo's authors deliberately slanted their legal advice to provide the White House with the conclusions it wanted, according to three former Bush lawyers who asked not to be identified discussing an ongoing probe. One of the lawyers said he was stunned to discover how much material the investigators had gathered, including internal e-mails and multiple drafts that allowed OPR to reconstruct how the memos were crafted. In a departure from the norm, Jarrett also told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee last year he would inform them of his findings and would "consider" releasing a public version. If he does, it could be the most revealing public glimpse yet at how some of the major decisions of Bush-era counterterrorism policy were made.

A Torture Report Could Spell Big Trouble For Bush Lawyers

I and most folks who became cynical about the Bush Administration suspect this to be true already. What I expect will come out of this is proof. That reference to e-mails is crucial. One thing that became clear during the U.S. Attorneys scandal is that even though the principles found ways to eliminate their e-mails, the subordinates implementing policy did not. Their e-mails often told interesting tales.

What I'm less sure of is what will become of all this. Despite Attorney General Eric Holder's declaration that waterboarding is torture, and that the President has no right to authorize it, it's pretty clear to me that President Obama and Holder would just as soon wash their hands of the issue of torture during the Bush Administration. If this reports is damning enough they might not be able to, but I'm not holding my breath. Sad to say, the spirit of justice is a very weak one in DC.

(h/t: Hilzoy)

UPDATE: Over at FireDogLake, Selise provides another possible explanation for why the urge to make all this torture and rendition stuff go away is so bipartisan:

Did the USA engage in torture by proxy during the Clinton years? A criminal investigation into published reports could answer that question. And if such an investigation were to show that torture was used, then we ought to hold Democrats as well as Republicans accountable for their crimes. Only if we, the citizens who have donated, volunteered and voted for Democrats, refuse to apply the same standards of accountability to both the Clinton and Bush administrations can [Salon columnist Joe] Conason fairly make the claim that it's about partisanship and not accountability.

A Challenge For Joe Conason And For Us

Personally, I see no difference practical difference between some of the alleged abuses Selise cites and the ones perpetrated by the Bush Administration. Both should be prosecuted, if it's possible. These abuses are a stain we'll wear as a country for a long time, and they seem to have netted us absolutely nothing. The more likely people underneath a President fear they may be prosecuted for doing something illegal on his behalf, the less willing they'll be to do it.

[Artist's conception of the Salem Witch Trials. Image credit: Knowledge News]

Lotus has written today about the release of the House Judiciary Committee's report on selective prosecutions by the Justice Department under President Bush. Here are a couple of choice quotes from that report's summary, with emphasis added:

There is extensive evidence that the prosecution of former Governor Don Siegelman was directed or promoted by Washington officials, likely including former White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Advisor to the President Karl Rove, and that political considerations influenced the decision to bring charges. Several witnesses have corroborated testimony before two Judiciary Subcommittees that the investigation against Governor Siegelman was “coming to a close” without charges until Washington officials directed local prosecutors to go back over the matter from top to bottom, and that decisions regarding the Siegelman case were being made at the very highest levels of the Administration. That testimony in turn corroborates the sworn statements of a Republican attorney that the son of the Republican Governor of Alabama told her that Karl Rove had pressed the Department to bring charges. The issue of the involvement of Mr. Rove or others at the White House in the Siegelman case remains an important open question.

There is also significant evidence of selective prosecution in the Siegelman case. Department investigators pursued leads relating to Governor Siegelman but appear to have ignored similar leads involving similar conduct by Republican politicians.

Allegations of Selective Prosecution in Our Federal Criminal Justice System

The U.S. Attorneys in Alabama appear to have been pikers compared to their counterparts in Western Pennsylvania:

The prosecution of Allegheny County Coroner Cyril Wecht by politically-connected U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan continues to raise concern about selective prosecution. Former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh powerfully described for two Judiciary Subcommittees his view that both the charges and the conduct of the prosecution reveal it, like other Pennsylvania cases he described, to be an “apparent political prosecution” and one that was “undertaken for political reasons as opposed to being done to serve the interests of justice.” After a two-month trial, a Pennsylvania jury recently failed to convict Dr. Wecht on any charges and, after the judge declared a mistrial, juror interviews revealed that “the majority of the jury thought he was innocent.” The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette also stated its concerns about the matter, editorializing that the case “added up to a big zero” and that it would be a “travesty” for the prosecution to continue, concerns echoed by a group of local Republicans and Democrats who recently wrote the Attorney General and U.S. Attorney Buchanan urging that plans to retry Dr. Wecht be reconsidered. The jury foreman observed that “as the case went on, my thoughts were that this was being politically driven.” And news that FBI agents were contacting members of the Wecht jury only further raised alarm.

Allegations of Selective Prosecution in Our Federal Criminal Justice System

Those of you who followed the Scooter Libby trial should recognize a significant problem with the emphasized phrases above. In the Libby case, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, even though he was opposed by some of the most able attorneys money could buy, managed to gain convictions on some subtle charges in a complicated case. In the Wecht case, the government is attempting to retry even though it's pretty clear they weren't going to get a conviction the first time. Paul Kiel explains:

The government's case relied on charges that Wecht had used resources from his coroner office for his private practice. Most of the counts of wire fraud against Wecht related to his use of county fax machines ($3.96 worth, his lawyers say) for his personal business. He was also charged with improperly billing the county for gasoline and mileage costs -- for a total of $1,778.55, his lawyers say.

Allegedly Political Prosecution Ends in Hung Jury

Two grand or so worth of fraud triggers a two-year federal case, and now they want to go to the expense of another trial. What could motivate the U.S. Attorney to pursue such a case? Former U.S. Attorney General and Pennsylvania Governor Richard Thornburg, suggested that this was a case that should have been handled by an ethics panel. I certainly agree with that assessment, as do at least a couple of prominent Pennsylvania Republicans.

Moving on to Mississippi, the report continues:

Charges against a group of judges and a practicing attorney in Mississippi arising out of what appear to be relatively common campaign fundraising practices raise similar issues of selective prosecution. A Republican-connected attorney who appears to have engaged in similar conduct was not indicted by this U.S. Attorney, further raising concerns about the possibility of selective prosecution.

Allegations of Selective Prosecution in Our Federal Criminal Justice System

This case looks a bit more circumstantial, and the accusations hinge partly on the fact that Dickie Scruggs, a prominent Mississippi attorney and brother in law of Senator Trent Lott, the former Republican majority leader, was not prosecuted for similar behavior. Unfortunately, given the preceding cases and the general level of apparent political influence in this Department of Justice, it certainly is worth further investigation.

Whether more investigation will be possible remains to be seen. The Justice Department has refused to release any more data than were available publicly already.

There is one ray of sunshine, though. The Judiciary Committee has announced that it will be issuing a subpoena for Karl Rove to testify about his involvement in Gov. Siegelman's prosecution.

UPDATE (Apr. 18): I've noticed in the comments on Lotus's article on this subject that there's a tendency to punch a strawman, which is that the report alleges that the people prosecuted weren't guilty of something. In the case of Cyril Wecht, I think he was clearly guilty of some questionable judgement, and may have committed the sort of fraud that would normally result in restitution or some similar punishment. Siegelman's case I'm less familiar with, but the apparent intervention of Karl Rove in a case that the local U.S. Attorney was seemingly willing to drop is the issue there. In the case of Judge Diaz, the government brought two weak cases against a sitting judge:

In addition, Justice Diaz never heard any cases involving Mr. Minor’s clients nor did he vote on any cases involving Mr. Minor. On those facts, the decision to indict Justice Diaz appears questionable at best, as confirmed by his acquittal. In fact, upon Justice Diaz’ acquittal of the corruption charges, Dunn Lampton was quoted as saying: “I knew we would have a problem on [prosecuting] Diaz because he didn’t vote on anything.”166 Regardless, U.S. Attorney Lampton appears to remain undeterred in his pursuit of a federal conviction of Justice Diaz. Three days after the acquittal, Mr. Lampton announced a second federal indictment of Justice Diaz, this time claiming that the campaign loans amounted to personal income that Justice Diaz had not properly reported. Justice Diaz was acquitted of that charge as well, after the jury deliberated on fifteen minutes. And in current comments, Mr. Lampton has hinted at yet more to come: “There are
other things I am aware of regarding Justice Diaz that caused me to refrain from commenting further on [the weakness of the prior cases], but it will come out later, and you’ll see. . . . I believe there was sufficient evidence to convict him, but maybe not for what he was charged.”

Allegations of Selective Prosecution in Our Federal Criminal Justice System

Two weak cases are followed by an inappropriate statement about future prosecutions.

On the subject of Allegheny County Coroner Cyril Wecht, the report makes this point:

It has been contended that Dr. Wecht’s case is indicative of other prosecutions in the Western District of Pennsylvania. Since beginning her tenure as U.S. Attorney in the Western District in 2001, [Mary Beth] Buchanan has apparently never brought corruption charges against a Republican official, and has only prosecuted officeholders who are Democrats. In addition to Dr. Wecht, Ms. Buchanan conducted highly visible grand jury investigations during the run-up to the 2006 elections of Tom Murphy, former Democratic Mayor of Pittsburgh, and Peter DeFazio, the former Democratic Sheriff of Allegheny County. During the same period, Ms. Buchanan did not bring a single charge against any Republican, including declining to prosecute former Republican Senator Rick Santorum for allegedly defrauding a local community by claiming residency when he and his family resided in Virginia.

Allegations of Selective Prosecution in Our Federal Criminal Justice System

Ms. Buchanan spent a lot of money to prosecute a weak case for a penny-ante "crime" against a Democratic politician, but refused to prosecute a U.S. Senator for apparently lying about his residence. It's possible there's a good explanation for the latter decision, but I can't think of one for the former.

You have to wonder what was on the minds of these USA's if it wasn't politics.

NPR is buzzing this morning with rumors that Attorney General Alberto "Abu" Gonzalez is resigning this morning. He is expected to announce this at a news conference at 10:30 AM Eastern Time.

I must say that this comes as a surprise. I figured the one person who'd be there at the end of the Bush Administration would be faithful old Abu, the man who always covers for the President. Unfortunately, it looks like the heat is just getting to be too much. That is to say, it's too much for his boss, not Abu. I think you can take it as a given that Abu's doing what he's told, and now he's been told to resign. The question is, why? My guess is that it has something to do with plans by the House and Senate judiciary committees to continue investigating the U.S. Attorney firings, along with the Justice Department's refusal to investigate the contempt of Congress complaint against Harriet Miers, the former White House Counsel who refused to appear before Congress after being subpoenaed.

Normally, I'd say good riddance, but this is the Bush Administration, where each appointee to a cabinet position is more heinous than the last one. Speculation seems to have centered on Michael Chertoff. As Christy Hardin Smith points out, this would be another appointment that fits that pattern:

It is worth a reminder on Mr. Chertoff that:

FEMA was unable to fully support the accuracy and completeness of certain unpaid obligations, and accounts payable, and the related effects on net position, if any, prior to the completion of DHS’s 2006 PAR. These unpaid obligations, as reported in the accompanying DHS balance sheet as of September 30, 2006, were $22.3 Billion or 46% of DHS consolidated unexpended appropriations at September 30, 2006. [emphasis mine]

To give some idea of proportionality, in fiscal year 2005 the entire Grants and Training (formerly know as State and Local Government Preparedness, a/k/a grants to get working radios for NYC firemen and protection for bridges, tunnels, chemical plants and nuclear facilities) was only $171 million.

So, follow me here, FEMA has lost and/or failed to account for a sum of money that is almost half of DHS’s entire budget and 130 times greater than the amount of money that the Department of Homeland Security is willing to spend to secure the homeland.

Close to half the budget for DHS, missing and unaccounted for — in any corporation, that would be a fraud investigation of massive proportions. In government, that’s sheer incompetence with your tax dollars. Certainly worth a lot of questions, isn’t it?

Alberto Gonzales Resigns As Attorney General

Nothing ever changes with these guys. It looks like Firedoglake will be covering this thing all morning. Stay tuned.

UPDATE (Aug. 28): Taylor Marsh has compiled a set of links showing why Bush's defense of Abu, particularly his assertion that the criticism of Gonzalez is politically motivated, is absurd.

I certainly wasn't expecting this. Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political strategist, has resigned effective August 31. Here's what the Wall Street Journal has to say:

In an interview with Wall Street Journal editorial page Editor Paul Gigot, Mr. Rove says he thinks "it's just time," that he's "got to do this for the sake of my family," and that he would have left earlier but didn't want to depart on the sour note of last fall's Republican rout by Democrats in the midterm elections. So effective Aug. 31, Mr. Rove says, he will relinquish the job of White House deputy chief of staff and longtime role of political overseer for the career of President Bush.

Rove Prepares His Political Exit

Needless to say, there's nothing terribly enlightening in the article concerning Rove's real motivation for leaving. Does anyone believe the "for the sake of his family" line anymore?

The Reuters Canada article is a bit more enlightening:

Democrats in Congress have had Rove in their sights as they look into why nine U.S. prosecutors were fired. The Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed him over the issue, but Bush cited executive privilege to reject it.

Karl Rove to quit this month

Now, that's our Karl - scurrying for cover when the heat is on. Wonder if he'll still be claiming executive privilege when he's gone? Don't. Of course he will:

Rove acknowledged Democrats may argue he was leaving to avoid scrutiny, but told the Journal: "I'm not going to stay or leave based on whether it pleases the mob."

Karl Rove to quit this month

He must not be referring to the mob in the White House, because they'll certainly be pleased. With Rove out of the spotlight, less attention will be focused on them, or so they're bound to be thinking. I doubt you would have found many people who would predict Rove leaving the White House before the end of the Bush Administration. The International Herald Tribune notes:

Rove's continued presence in the White House had become a source of fascination in Washington as others, like [former Rove aide Dan] Bartlett, left, and as Democrats homed in on his role in the firings of several federal prosecutors.

Yet it was nonetheless widely believed both inside and outside the White House that he would walk out the door behind Bush at the end of his term in January 2009 and would help the president solidify his legacy before his exit.

Karl Rove, top Bush aide, to step down

I don't know what did it, but it was more than family issues that pried Rove's fat, greasy fingers from the levers of power. I suspect we'll be finding out what that is in the weeks and months ahead.

UPDATE: I should have realized Marcy Wheeler would be all over this already. She's come up with a whole list of possible reasons why Rove is resigning. In brief, they are, in reverse order of likelihood as she puts it:

1. To spend time with his family.


2. The Republicans have figured out he's a loser (I tend to discount this as much as the previous).


3. Rove disagrees with much of the Republican party about immigration policy. This is at least plausible, in that the nativist strain of most Republican rhetoric on this subject isn't conducive to recruiting Latino voters.


4. The Abramoff investigation (now, that's more like it).


5. The Office Of Special Counsel (OSC) investigation into the politicization of the operation of government. There's lots of material there, that's for sure.


6. The Iglesias investigation - where Rove replaced a U.S. Attorney with a good record with a political crony.

UPDATE 2: Christy Hardin Smith live blogged the Presidential press conference announcing Rove's departure.

UPDATE 3: CHS and Firedoglake readers came up with the most likely explanation - greed. As one reader put it, if he's going to peddle influence, he needs to do it while he still has influence to peddle.

UPDATE 4: In the comments, shoephone contributed this link to an article on Rove by Larry Johnson. LJ believes this may have more to do with Abramoff than other scandals, but that mainly seems to be because he has some visibility into what's going on there. The other possibility he mentions is Plamegate. Plamegate's certainly a PR disaster, but I suppose if there's any relationship there it's in the fact that Rove lost some of his responsibilities due to that evolving scandal.

Image credit: National Archives



Think Alberto Gonzalez has ever read this thing?

John Edwards' campaign has promised:

We will send one copy of the Constitution to [Attorney General Alberto] Gonzales' office for every person who signs our petition. If we reach our goal of 25,000 signatures, we will add all the names to the biggest copy of the Constitution you have ever seen — and send that to his office too!

Tell Gonzales it is time to go!

I'd love to see that. If you find the thought amusing, too, sign the petition.

UPDATE: While we're on the subject of our Attorney General, here's a bit of good news that broke late today:

Some Democratic House members - including several former prosecutors - said Monday they will seek a measure directing the House Judiciary Committee to investigate whether to impeach Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., who was a prosecutor in Washington state in the late 1970s and 1980s, is the lead sponsor of the measure.

Co-sponsors of the resolution include Democratic Reps. Xavier Becerra of California, Michael Arcuri of New York, Ben Chandler of Kentucky, Dennis Moore of Kansas, Bruce Braley of Iowa and Tom Udall of New Mexico.

House Democrats to seek impeachment inquiry for Gonzales

If you'd asked me to compile a list of Congressional rabble-rousers, I don't think any of these folks would be on it. If these folks are ready for impeachment, you can bet that most Democrats are, I think. Considering what shameless partisans Republicans have been on this issue, I'd be shocked if many of them were persuaded yet. That's what you and I are here to change.

The bill will be introduced tomorrow. No indication of when it will be considered. I suspect it won't be until after the summer recess, but no one should trust my guesses on this matter. Congress has been surprising me lately.

According to the Washington Times, the Senate Judiciary Committee is also on the warpath regarding Abu:

The Washington Times is reporting today that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy and the panel's ranking Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter, warned yesterday that Attorney General Gonzales "must quickly clarify apparent contradictions in his testimony about surveillance laws or risk a possible perjury investigation or a special prosecutor." Sen. Leahy, on CBS's Face the Nation, warned Gonzales "has a week to correct [his testimony] if he wants. I'd suggest he consult with a lawyer as he does it." And on the CBS Evening News, Sen. Specter was shown saying, "The Department of Justice would be much better off without him."

Gonzales May Face Perjury Probe

Now, I think many folks are familiar with Sen. "Snarlin" Arlen Specter, but for those who aren't, let's just say that he has a record of quickly folding whenever the White House puts pressure on him. Maybe he's finally had enough, but I'd count him as a fair weather ally at best. Leahy, on the other hand, is a serious guy, and if Abu doesn't come clean I think you can at least expect a perjury hearing sometime soon.

UPDATE 2: One more update, then I'm done. In case you need your memory refreshed on other liesmisstatements Abu has made, the Washington Post's Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein have written an article reviewing some of his greatest hits:

When Alberto R. Gonzales was asked during his January 2005 confirmation hearing whether the Bush administration would ever allow wiretapping of U.S. citizens without warrants, he initially dismissed the query as a "hypothetical situation."

But when Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) pressed him further, Gonzales declared: "It is not the policy or the agenda of this president to authorize actions that would be in contravention of our criminal statutes."

By then, however, the government had been conducting a secret wiretapping program for more than three years without court oversight, possibly in conflict with federal intelligence laws.

Gonzales's Truthfulness Long Disputed

I was also remiss in not giving SusanUnPC at No Quarter a tip of the hat. Her article covered these issues. As she points out, Rep. Inslee is an ally of Senator Hillary Clinton. That fact, together with Sen. Chuck Schumer's outspoken calls for investigations of Gonzalez show that the big Democratic players are probably supporting Leahy in this.

I'm starting to think that Abu's days as AG are numbered, and not because his President is leaving office in seventeen months.

In a strict party-line vote, the House Judiciary Committee passed a resolution recommending contempt of Congress charges for Harriet Meiers, President Bush's former White House Counsel, and Joshua Bolten, White House Chief of Staff.

Christy Hardin Smith live blogged the hearings this morning. Reading them, I'm appalled at the transparent idiocy of the Republicans' excuses for not supporting this measure. Meiers refused to show up for a hearing when she was subpoenaed. Who has done that before and gotten away with it? Do they really want to make the Congress an inconsequential branch of government? I suppose if you looked at their work habits during the 109th Congress, you'd realize that was a stupid question. Of course they do.

I wonder what it's going to take to get the Republicans to do what's right for their country. In the end, I think it will hurt their party more to be seen as obstructing an important investigation, which is what they are doing here. That they're doing it for an arrogant and foolish President with an approval rating in the mid twenties makes this move positively suicidal.

UPDATE: Jane Hamsher sums up the HJC hearings today quite eloquently:

The moebius strip logic of the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee is astonishing.

We haven’t found any evidence of wrongdoing therefore we should not investigate. Of course we can’t investigate because witnesses are refusing to cooperate, but because Carol Lam doesn’t have evidence to prove she was the victim of a crime we need to stop right now.

Also, we despise Bill Clinton and revile everything he has ever done but he is nonetheless the bar we establish for acceptable behavior from the administration.

You have to be sucking hard for oxygen in a vapor lock for an awfully long time in order for this to make any sense.

Breathtaking GOP Mendacity in the House Judiciary Today

It appears that a considerable portion of America is short on oxygen, and the worst oxygen deficit appears to be located in Washington, DC.

Image credit: Official DoJ portrait

You may have noticed by now that in my writing I've generally steered clear of using nicknames for our public officials. I seldom even refer to Senator Hillary Clinton by her first name only. It somehow seems disrespectful of people I don't know. Of course, I can't resist referring to our current Vice President as "Deadeye" or "Deadeye Dick", but then, that's like a red cape in front of a bull, isn't it? One exception to that, however, is the case of our U.S. Attorney General, Alberto "Abu" Gonzalez.

Why? To understand that, I first have to diverge into a brief discussion of one of the previous horrors of our age, the Holocaust. As an engineer, one of the things I've found most appalling about the death camps was the careful design and construction of the places. Someone put a great deal of rational thought into just how to most efficiently kill millions of innocent human beings. Learned people did this. Contrast this with the Pol Pot massacres in Cambodia or the recent slaughter in Rwanda, which were carried out by uneducated people using primitive means. Horrible as they were, at least the inhuman acts weren't carried out with calm and rational forethought by people who could consider alternatives. Being learned doesn't guarantee a person has a conscience. Nevertheless, having the fortune to be well educated does confer a responsibility. The educated don't get to claim that they can't understand the implications of what they're doing.

That's the reason I despise Alberto Gonzalez. He was, in many ways, the legal architect of the network of black sites and of the torture that occurred there. He and other learned people, like John Yoo, discussed the idea of how much torture was legal while he was the White House Counsel. They weren't in danger. They weren't involved in combat, or trying to chase down dangerous criminals. They were sitting in an air-conditioned office discussing whether organ failure meant the torture had gone too far. That people with advanced degrees, who work in a profession whose guiding principle is supposed to be justice for all, could sit around calmly discussing such things is both appalling and alarming. That these people held, and in some cases continue to hold, high places in our government is downright frightening.

So, as Alberto Gonzalez is being grilled by the Senate today on his behavior during the U.S. Attorneys firings, among other things, I don't feel one bit sorry for him. He isn't experiencing one tenth of the pain he's caused other people to go through, many of whom were probably innocent of any wrongdoing that involves the United States. He richly deserves to be remembered as the guy who made Abu Ghraib possible.

That's why he'll always be "Abu" to me.

And remember Senators, if there's no organ failure, it's not torture.

UPDATE (July 28): The New York Times has called for Abu's impeachment, at least if he doesn't cooperate with Congress concerning a special prosecutor:

Democratic lawmakers are asking for a special prosecutor to look into Mr. Gonzales’s words and deeds. Solicitor General Paul Clement has a last chance to show that the Justice Department is still minimally functional by fulfilling that request.

If that does not happen, Congress should impeach Mr. Gonzales.

Mr. Gonzales’s Never-Ending Story

In my opinion, he's given Congress plenty of reason already, but I agree that if they refuse to appoint a special prosecutor, the only other choice is acceptance that the executive branch is now allowed to do whatever it wants. (h/t Taylor Marsh)

Image credit: NYTimes photo reduced by Cujo359

It's a hot day in the state of Washington. It's supposed to be in the 90s again, which is hot when you don't have air conditioning. Meanwhile, it's a busy day in the other Washington. Firedoglake is having a two-for-one live blogging extravaganza this morning. Christy Hardin Smith is live blogging the Sara Taylor testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Taylor used to be Karl Rove's aide before she resigned this year. It doesn't seem to be all that informative, as Paul Kane writes:

And so it's going this morning at a packed hearing inside the tiny hearing room of the Judiciary Committee. Taylor is trying to thread the legal needle of honoring the committee's subpoena commanding her appearance to testify about the matter, but at the same time honoring Bush and Fielding's broad request that she not answer specific questions that they believe would violate executive privilege.

Taylor Walking Fine Line in Testimony

Jane Hamsher and Marcy Wheeler are live blogging the House Judiciary Committe's hearings about the hearings about the pardon of Scooter Libby. SusanUnPC at NoQuarter has some thoughts, as well.

While some good things happened today, some bad has happened also. The Webb-Hagel amendment(PDF), designed to ensure that troop rotations through Iraq provide enough down time so that the units can maintain readiness. It was defeated this morning by a cloture vote. Mimikatz has a post-mortem. I agree with Mimikatz, Harry Reid screwed up by not calling the Republicans' bluff. It's not the first time, either. As a reward for his failure, Sen. Reid gets to see this picture of him looking ineffectual during one of his previous failures.

Science fiction writer Robert Heinlein opposed the draft. The reason, he wrote, was that any society that had to force its people to fight for it wasn't worth preserving. I suppose that goes for a society that won't pick its leaders wisely, too. In the last few elections we've had some sorry choices. Try as I might, I can't just blame the news or special interests. People didn't want to take the time to understand what each candidate stood for, if anything, and what his record really was. They either trusted their opinionated friends, or the cool guys on radio or TV, or they just figured they could determine whom to vote for based on how they looked or how they shook hands.

I often wonder just how stupid you have to be to think that's a good way to choose a leader. I suppose it's better than the way chimpanzees do it, but it sure doesn't say much for our intelligence, does it? For anyone who might feel that they can read a person this way let me tell you something.

You're an idiot.

Politicians are people who are good at making you like them. They are people who are good at sounding as though they hear your concerns and agree with them. Most people just assume that when a politician feels a certain way on an issue he'll vote that way. Often times, he won't. Joe Lieberman made fools of such people during his last election for the Senate. He said he wanted the Iraq War to end. People who voted for him were shocked to find out that he hasn't voted that way once since. To know that Lieberman was lying, all you needed to do was look at his voting record, but they figured he was just such a nice man that he wouldn't lie to them. Idiots.

So, on this Independence Day, I'm going to give you some of the best advice you've ever read about politics. It requires effort. You have to learn things. You have to check out what politicians say, and you have to check out what people who say things about those politicians are saying. No one speaks the truth all the time, even those of us who try. Sometimes, we're wrong. Find out what the facts are, and then figure out who knows what the facts really are and how to interpret them.

This Fourth of July we're seeing what being wrong about politics can mean. We're in a ruinous war. One of our major cities is still a mess almost two years after it was flooded, with no end in sight. We have seen our government abuse powers it was never supposed to have, fire prosecutors who were doing their jobs, and replace them with partisan hacks. We've watched as they exposed the identity of a CIA agent to discredit her husband, who had criticized their rush into that ruinous, and completely unnecessary war. If you have children, they may some day be involved in that war, or in the next war that's caused by the results of this one.

What freedom means is that your fate is in your hands. It's your country, but only if you make it your responsibility to stay informed about what's happening in your world. If you leave it to your bigmouthed friends, the cool guys on radio, or even the earnest blogger, you leave your fate in their hands. Which means you really leave your fate in the hands of whoever controls or manipulates them, people who should never be trusted, because they don't give a damn what happens to you. The sort of people, in short, who are running thingsscrewing things up right now.

I'm not resigned to this situation we're in by any means, but there are times when I really wonder whether we're a society that's worth saving. Well, we're going to have to save ourselves this time, and if we can't do it because not enough people cared, I guess I have my answer.

So, how about it, America? On this Independence Day, why don't you do your part to preserve freedom? Turn off the fucking American Idol re-run and pick up a newspaper, or go read a blog, or take a class in history or government. Do some damn thing to get yourselves informed about how your country is supposed to work, and why. Because trust me, folks, when the shitheads who invaded and destroyed Iraq finally get around to finishing off this country, I won't have any patience for your complaints.

UPDATE: Added third to last paragraph. Somehow, it makes more sense to me with that transition. Happy Fourth of July.

UPDATE 2: Go check out Christy Hardin Smith's essay and then scroll down to Cynic's comment at 149. You'll be glad you did.

Image credit: GWU National Security Archive

There's been a new document dump in the US Attorneys scandal, which I used to refer to as the "USA Eight" scandal before we knew there were something like nine or ten USAs who were fired for still mysterious reasons.

This group of documents are all e-mails, as have been many in this scandal. One observation we old-timers can make is that most communication these days is done by e-mail, not by letter. That's interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that communications often happen in minutes when they used to take hours or days, and that when there's no editing people say the darnedest things. But I digress.

I haven't looked at this new group of e-mails, which appear to be from Harriet Miers and Sara Taylor, who were subpoenaed today by the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. Fortunately, Marcy Wheeler has. She's found some juicy stuff:

There are some doozies in here--where Harriet talks about asking "the Chief" about something, where Kyle Sampson admits to deleting an email from Bill Kelley on the Pryor/Griffin affair, and Sara Taylor's repeated attempts to ram Tim Griffin into Arkansas at all costs.

The Secrets They're Still Protecting

She then goes on to ask the question that's on everyone's mind, one way or another:

But I find another question just as interesting. What are the emails that they're still refusing to turn over. After all, although the emails they had previously withheld are embarrassing and outline the White House's intimate involvement in the purge, they're still not that damning. So what is it that they're still keeping hidden?

The Secrets They're Still Protecting

Most of us would stop right there, but not the relentless emptywheel. She has gone on to build a table of interesting e-mails that appear to be missing. Check it out.

Meanwhile, Talking Points Memo is still on the case. They observe:

The subpoenas follow fast on Justice Department emails turned over to Congress last night that fattened the already substantial case that the White House was intimately involved in installing Timothy Griffin, a former aide to Karl Rove as the U.S. attorney in Little Rock.

The Justice Department, in a letter vetted by the White House, wrote Congress back in February that Karl Rove didn't play "any role" in Griffin's nomination -- a statement the Department has since admitted was false.

Committees Subpoena Former Rove Aide, Miers

Among other things, we're learning that when this Justice Department denies it's doing something, that doesn't mean very much.

Scarecrow makes some observations about what this Justice Department has become at FDL today:

The Justice Department has become so politically compromised that no one can assume its criminal prosecutions are based on facts instead of political motivations and furtherance of one-party rule. The civil rights division has turned into a perpetrator of civil wrong. Career attorneys who were dedicated to protect Americans’ right to vote have been pushed out and replaced by political operatives hell bent on denying likely Democratic voters the ability to even register. Honorable prosecutors have been replaced by White House loyalists and incompetent cronies. Men and women with integrity who would never sanction wholesale lawlessness by the executive or massive invasions of citizens’ privacy or sanction torture have been “retired” to make way for political operatives who justify felonies, illegal surveillance, torture, illegal kidnapping, indefinite detention and the imposition of military law on US residents.

America Under Siege, But It’s Just Politics

This has certainly been the trend. There are folks who've said this is all about vote fraud, or something else. My guess is that it's about many things, none of them good. Scarecrow listed them in that paragraph.

Keep in mind that Sara Taylor was one of Karl Rove's aides, and if emptywheel's observations are correct, one of those ambitious young people who sometimes reach a bit farther than they ought to. Maybe she'll be feeling like making amends. One can hope.

So read, enjoy. Try not to let it ruin your lunch.

Organization Charts

I've never been good at organization charts. Usually, the only things I'm really interested in when I'm part of an organization is whom I'm working for, who, if anyone, is working for me, and who's running the show. Beyond that, it's all pretty academic to me. That's what bosses have to know.

So, it came as something as a shock when I finally realized something I'd stumbled onto the other day with the story about Tasia Scolinos' efforts to put some lipstick on the pig that was the USA Eight scandal. It was this: Tasia Scolinos, a somewhat important person in the Justice Department, found out that the US Attorneys were going to be fired from Catherine Martin, a White House official. See the third e-mail in the article. Martin apparently learned about it from William Kelley, who is according to Zimbio, the Deputy White House Counsel and Deputy Assistant to the President. According to this chart, put together by Dan Froomkin, he was Deputy Counsel in 2005. (See the second e-mail). Now, this wouldn't be the first time that someone found out something about what was going on in his, or her, organization from someone outside of it, but the fact remains that Martin found out about it before Scolinos, and she found out about it from a deputy counsel. What this implies, but certainly doesn't prove, is that the White House was out in front on this issue. It's certainly not proof, but if I were on a Senate or House panel investigating things, I'd have a few questions for Ms. Martin and Mr. Kelley.

Gonzopedia Backs Up Cohen

Yesterday, I mentioned an article Andrew Cohen wrote saying that Attorney General Gonzalez attended a meeting where they discussed the impending firing of the USA Eight. In particular, he wrote this:

On Friday night, however, after the network news broadcasts had been completed and the cable lineups already set, the Justice Department disclosed that on November 27, 2006, just 10 days or so before seven of the eight federal prosecutors were fired, Gonzales and his deputies held a formal meeting to discuss the matter. There is an email record that indicates preparations for this meeting and all of the key players, including the Attorney General’s now-departed chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson and Gonzales’ likely-soon-to-be-departed deputy, Paul J. McNulty.

On Gonzales: Defining "Discussion"

Over at the Gonzopedia, we've located some of the emails that show this. On Document 3-23-07 (9), page 2, there's an appointment reminder e-mail saying that several DoJ people, including Paul McNulty, the Deputy AG, and Kyle Sampson, the DoJ Chief of Staff, William Moschella, and Michael Elston. On Document 3-23-07 (8), page 1 is an e-mail written by Kyle Sampson explaining that those people were meeting the AG to discuss the U.S. Attorney appointments. Document 3-23-07 (8), page 2 shows that Michael Elston had to back out of the meeting due to his wife's medical appointment. Document 3-23-07 (8), page 3 shows an e-mail Sampson sent with a subject "Pls add AG to 9AM" from his blackberry. This shows why Cohen asserted that Gonzalez was at the meeting. It's all there in the documents as long as you know where to look.

Incidently, if you want to confirm that what we write in the Gonzopedia is accurate, check the source documents, which are linked at the top of every page.

Still Working

We're still enterring documents over at the Gonzopedia. Thanks to the folks who have been reading and entering data. We sure can use the help. There are still lots of documents to be recorded. No doubt there are still at least a few undiscovered treasures in there.

UPDATE: If you haven't already, check out Larry Johnson's article about John McCain's latest pronouncements on Iraq:

We already have one President barely in touch with reality. The last thing we need is another ideological nut job incapable of recognizing reality while it is kicking him in the balls.

John McCain, Crazy Bastard

Ouch.

UPDATE 2: James Wolcott has some thoughts on the folks I've called the idiots in the hall:

Imus and Williams, joshing each other the way multimillionaire media guys do, had just wrapped up a speculative tete a tete about whether Nascar drivers wear diapers or some other urine-retention device during those long races. Having wrung as much mirth from that as they could, they switched to politics, where Williams cited a comment from John Harwood about how the Democrats were more interested in investigating than legislating, and that they were running the danger of having some of the mud they dig up spatter on them.

Such solicitude. No doubt the tribunes at NBC News are flashing caution lights in the best interests of Democrats, for fear they might injure themselves lrunning around on the playground. But you have to wonder if there's a prescribed amount of political corruption--muck--that's allowed to be unearthed before it lands in the gone-too-far/boomerang effect/overplayed-their-hand category. Beltway pundits never seem to want to get to the bottom of anything. A little surface scraping suffices for them.

Rhyme Schemes (updated)

People are trying to reclaim our country from the thieves who hijacked it and all these people can do is joke about diapers.

A couple of themes have been popping up today regarding the eight U.S. Attorneys fired by the Justice Department last December. First, it's that there clearly is no mention in these e-mails and letters of the folks who actually had the authority to fire these people. I mentioned that on Saturday. Andrew Cohen discussed it today:

On March 13th, as the temperature rose and the critics circled, Alberto R. Gonzales went on live television and said this: “But again, with respect to this whole process, like every CEO, I am ultimately accountable and responsible for what happens within the department. But that is in essence what I knew about the process; was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on. That's basically what I knew as the Attorney General.” (Emphasis added).

He continued (and again I have added the emphasis): “I never saw documents. We never had a discussion about where things stood. What I knew was that there was ongoing effort that was led by Mr. Sampson, vetted through the Department of Justice, to ascertain where we could make improvements in U.S. attorney performances around the country.” As incredulous as some observers (like me) were to hear him say these things—what kind of leader wouldn’t know the details about such a delicate matter?—it is fair to say that the nation collectively agreed at the time to believe the Attorney General’s story, to give him the benefit of the doubt.

On Friday night, however, after the network news broadcasts had been completed and the cable lineups already set, the Justice Department disclosed that on November 27, 2006, just 10 days or so before seven of the eight federal prosecutors were fired, Gonzales and his deputies held a formal meeting to discuss the matter. There is an email record that indicates preparations for this meeting and all of the key players, including the Attorney General’s now-departed chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson and Gonzales’ likely-soon-to-be-departed deputy, Paul J. McNulty.

On Gonzales: Defining "Discussion"

So either Abu slept through the meeting, or he actually did know what was going on. If he didn't understand why it was happening he's more obtuse than most ten year-olds, but that's a presumption. Dan Froomkin, apparently, is guilty of that presumption as well:

Did that meeting not make an impression? Did he choose to lie about it? Was he secretly drawing a distinction between giving his approval and knowing anything about what he had given his approval for?

Who's Scripting Gonzales?

Here's shoephone's comment from Saturday's article:

Clearly the emails we see are keeping Abu out of the discussions, but I wonder about all the blackberry communications, going through a different server. And Rove is known to use a blackberry for almost all his communications...

Abu is expendable. The WH knows he won't ever betray the godfather, and anyway, his fingerprints are all over the torture and wiretapping operations. All roads lead to Rove. Just the fact that Rove's assistant, Glynda Becker, was the one fielding complaints from the WA State GOP about McKay and then Rove relayed those complaints directly to Abu and Miers. (And then -- not documented yet -- who did Miers talk to about it? POTUS.) And then POTUS talked about it with Abu. The phony voter fraud games are in Rove's blood. It goes way back.

Comment fron: Who Fired The USA Eight?

To say it's been a noticeable thing is an understatement. Yet, to read most editorialists in the national newspapers, you'd think this was all some kind of unfortunate misunderstanding. Scarecrow fills us in on the details.

Scarecrow's article also brings us to our second theme of the firings. It seems to have a whole lot more to do with a Republican desire to control the election process than it does with immigration.

The Justice Department/White House scandal is not about offending Republican Senators, though the Senator from New Mexico may well have flirted with obstruction of justice. And the scandal has little if anything to do with whether the dismissed attorneys were sufficiently focused on immigration, as Brooks hopes. This scandal is a thousand times more serious.

This scandal is about the White House effort to transform a portion of the Department of Justice into a criminal enterprise, a weapon to be wielded by Karl Rove, the White House’ senior political operative, to secure and maintain a Republican regime and ruling majority. Its tactics can’t be described as either “good” or “bad” political interference; they were criminal, because they included undermining the nation’s voting laws to selectively discourage Democratic voters, abusing prosecutorial discretion to intimidate or destroy Democratic officials and shielding Republican officials and Republican lobbyists and contributors from exposure for their corruption, all of which was linked via Abramoff/Cunningham type scandals to funding the Republican party.

The People’s Business

Last Friday (March 24), Lynn Allen wrote an article about the relationship between vote fraud and the purge:

Perry Hooper "won" that election eleven months later with the help of a tremendously sophisticated PR campaign, many appeals to different courts, including the federal courts, and heaven knows how much outright fraud.

If these tactics sound wildly familiar, there is a reason. Fast forward to 2004 and our Washington State gubernatorial election. The same tactics were used, undoubtedly by folks that Rove had either trained or was talking to every day or both. Except in Washington State, a Republican judge in Chelan country ran a fair trial and stated that the Republicans did not have a case. Then John McKay, the well-respected Republican-appointed federal prosecutor, who had conducted a thorough investigation of voter fraud in that election, refused to convene a federal grand jury because, as he said, "we never found any evidence of criminal conduct."

For his troubles, McKay was listed as insubordinate by the DoJ political handlers and placed on the list of federal prosecutors to be fired.

McKay in Context

My guess is that there's plenty more out there, but for now I have to stop and go do something else for a while. Hopefully, we'll be picking this up again tomorrow.

UPDATE: Mash, who is providing the host for the Gonzopedia, has an excellent article on the relationship between the Dusty Foggo/Duke Cunningham scandals and Carol Lam's firing. I mentioned this in passing in an earlier article, but Mash has laid out quite a detailed timeline of suspicious contract awards. Taylor Marsh pointed out an AP story about how Monica Goodling, Abu Gonzo's White House liason, intends to take the Fifth at the upcoming Senate Judiciary hearings.

"I have decided to follow my lawyer's advice and respectfully invoke my constitutional right," Monica Goodling, Gonzales' counsel and White House liaison, said in a statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Gonzales aide to invoke Fifth Amendment

Maybe we can get Robert Gates to declare her a terrorist?

UPDATE 2 (March 27): Corrected the link to the Gonzopedia.

We've been gradually transcribing and summarizing the Justice Department's document dump over at the Gonzopedia. One document I transcribed today, Document 3-23-07 (10), has been interesting in that sort of way that all train wrecks are interesting. If it didn't happen to you, in other words, it's interesting. If it's happening to you it's devastating and maddening.

The first item in this document, chronologically speaking, is on page two. It's an e-mail from Kyle Sampson, the erstwhile chief of staff for Attorney General Alberto "Abu" Gonzalez, to Harriet Miers, who was the White House Counsel at the time:

From: Kyle Sampson
Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2006 11:02 AM
To: Miers, Harriet; Kelley, William K.
CC: Paul J. McNulty
Subject: USA replacement plan
Importance: High

Harriet/Bill, please see the attached. Please note (1) the plan, by its terms, would commence this week; (2) I have consulted with the DAG, but not yet informed others who would need to be brought into the loop, including Acting Associate AG Bill Mercer, EOUSA Director Mike Battle, and AGAC Chair Johnny Sutton (nor have I informed anyone in Karl's shop, another pre-execution necessity I would recommend); and (3) I am concerned that to execute this plan properly we must all be on the same page and be steeled to withstand any political upheaval that might result (see Step 3); if we start caving to complaining U.S. Attorneys or Senators then we shouldn't do it -- it'll be more trouble than it is worth.

We'll stand by for a green light from you. Upon the green light, we'll (1) circulate the below plan to the list of folks in Step 3 (and ask that you circulate it to Karl's shop), (2) confirm that Kelley is making the Senator/Bush political lead calls, and (3) get Battle making the calls to the USAs. Let us know.

<<USA replacement plan.doc>>

Kyle Sampson
Chief of Staff
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20530

Documents released 3-23-07 (10), Page 2

The content of this e-mail has been discussed already in the Internet, but I think one thing should be clear from it that you just don't get from most accounts in the mainstream news. Sampson is addressing this to the White House Counsel's office, not to the WH chief of staff, or some other person who has authority over White House operations. Yet, the document says "We'll stand by for a green light from you." Are we supposed to think that the White House Counsel has the authority to fire U.S. Attorneys? I don't think so. This isn't proof that Bush is behind the firings, but someone in the Administration besides Harriet Miers pulled the trigger. Who is it? We'll need the White House's communications records to know that.

So far, I haven't found that USA replacement plan document. Must be something to do with an upcoming investigation, right?

And you wondered why executive privilege was suddenly so important among the folks who wouldn't hear of it during President Clinton's term in office.

The next e-mail in this set of documents, chronologically, is this one from William Kelley to Catherine Martin, Jeff Jennings, and Debbie Fiddelke. Catherine Martin is identified by Sourcewatch as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Communications Director for Policy and Planning. You might remember her from this chart as someone to whom the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson was leaked and who passed some of that information on to VP Dick Cheney, but I digress. The e-mail says:

From: Kelley, William K.
To:Fiddelke, Debbie S.; Jennings, Jeffery S.; Martin, Catherine
Sent: Fri Nov 17 12:32:06 2006
Subject: FW: USA replacement plan

<<USA replacement plan.doc>>

The email below, and the attached document, reflect a plan by DOJ to replace several US Attorneys. By statute, US Attorneys serve for four year terms, which are commonly (but not always) extended by inaction -- in practice, they serve until replaced. They serve at the pleasure of the President, but often have very strong home-state political juice, including with their Senators.

Before executing this plan, we wanted to give your offices a heads up and seek input on changes that might reduce the profile or political fallout. Thanks.

Documents released 3-23-07 (10), Page 1

I'll leave the bit about how long U.S. Attorneys serve and why to others to discuss, but there does seem to be a bit of defensiveness about that language, don't you think? The only real concern expressed here is political fallout, although as we know, there was actually no real cause for firing at least seven of the USA Eight.

My inference about that attitude is bolstered by the remaining documents.

Next, we have this e-mail from Catherine Martin to Tasia Scolinos:

From: Catherine Martin
Sent: Friday, November 17, 2006 1:29 PM
To: Scolinos, Tasia
Subject: Fw: USA replacement plan
Importance: High

Are you looped in on this? What is your comms plan?

Documents released 3-23-07 (10), Page 1

Apparently, Tasia Scolinos hasn't accomplished enough skullduggery yet to rate her own Sourcewatch page, but according to DoJ, she was named the Director of Public Affairs in early January, 2005. Her position makes it somewhat imperative that she come up with a comms plan, apparently. The plan she came up with was apparently in two parts. Here's what she came up with:

From: Scolinos, Tasia
Sent: Friday, November 17,2006 2:00 PM
To: Catherine Martin
Subject: RE: USA replacement plan

Thanks for flagging - we are not looped in - first I have heard of it. Let me call up there and figure out what is happening here and get back to you.

Also, neither Brian nor I can be on the 3:30 call by the way - conflicting meetings - let me know if that is a problem.

Documents released 3-23-07 (10), Page 1

and here's the second phase, which was hatched about three hours later:

From: Scolinos, Tasia
Sent: Friday, November 17,2006 5:40 PM
To: Catherine Martin
Subject: RE: USA replacement plan

Its only six US attorneys (there are 94) and I think most of them will resign quietly - they don't get anything out of making it public they were asked to leave in terms of future job prospects. I don't see it as being a national story - especially if it phases in over a few months. Any concerns on your end?

Documents released 3-23-07 (10), Page 3

From this, we can infer two things. One is that on November 17 of last year, less than a month before the Pearl Harbor Day firings of the USA Eight, only six were on the block. We'll name them in a moment. The second thing we can infer is that poor Tasia is in way over her head here. It's pretty clear she's never worked with attorneys, particularly the successful, type A sorts who tend to be U.S. Attorneys. Expecting them to keep quiet after being summarily fired for no good reason is about as sensible as expecting Iraqis to throw flowers in our paths after we invaded their country. Oh, wait. Nevermind.

Anyway, even Barry Bonds fails two-thirds of the times he comes to the plate. It's easy to criticize when you're not the one who has to see the ball and hit it.

So, who were the six attorneys at the time? That mystery is cleared up in Ms. Scolinos' last e-mail of this group:

From: Scolinos, Tasia
Sent: Tuesday, November 21,2006 1:20 PM
To: Catherine Martin
Subject: RE: USA replacement plan

* Paul Charlton (D. Ariz.)
* Carol Lam (S.D. Cal.)
* Margaret Chiara (W.D. Mich.)
* Dan Bogden (D. Nev.)
* John McKay (W.D. Wash.)
* David Iglesias (D.N.M.)

The one common link here is that three of them are along the southern border so you could make the connection that DOJ is unhappy with the immigration prosecution numbers in those districts.

Documents released 3-23-07 (10), Page 5

There were, of course, three USAs in that list whose districts were not on the Mexican border, and two USAs whose districts actually border Canada. So not only was Ms. Solinos' geographical knowledge at typical Bush Administration levels, but I think that story would have been a hard sell in any case. Unfortunately, to continue our baseball metaphor, making up a story that's going to cover this one was a bit like hitting a major league fastball when you're blind.

There's an old joke about how there are jobs that are tough to fill because you have to find someone smart enough to do the job but dumb enough to take it. I think being the Bush Administration Justice Department's chief apologist must be one of those jobs.

Anyhow, the two USAs who weren't on that list yet are Kevin Ryan and Bud Cummins. Ryan, according to reports such as this, is the only one that may have deserved to be fired. Paul Kiel of TPM Muckraker put it this way:

Just let that sink in. In the only case where there was a strong case for firing, the DoJ had to be extorted to do it.

Today's Must Read

From the documents, it's clear they weren't considering it in mid-November. I'm not sure why Cummins wasn't on this list, but documents from earlier in the year had already mentioned him by name as being on the block. Perhaps by November his firing was a fait accompli.

So, the question remains, who really authorized the firings? Clearly, it wasn't Catherine Martin or Harriet Miers. They might have had the authority to fire someone in their own departments, but that's about it. The "juice", to coin a term, needed to fire someone in another department lies elsewhere in the White House.

UPDATE (March 25): Christy Hardin Smith riffs on the subject of Cathie Martin at FDL.

UPDATE2 (March 25): Speaking of who fired the USA Eight, shoephone has an interesting question or two at Evergreen Politics this morning. While this is centered on the fate of John McKay, the US Attorney for Western Washington, you can bet this question can be asked of all seven of the US Attorneys not named Kevin Ryan. Here's why:

In a Decemeber 4, 2006 email, Sampson tells then-White House counsel Harriet Miers of the protocol DOJ came up with for notifying home-state Republicans of the impending firings of their USAs. This was the protocol:

-AG calls Kyl
In a Decemeber 4, 2006 email, [DoJ Chief of Staff Kyle] Sampson tells then-White House counsel Harriet Miers of the protocol DOJ came up with for notifying home-state Republicans of the impending firings of their USAs. This was the protocol:

-AG calls Kyl

-Harriet/Bill call Ensign and Domenici

-White House OPA calls California, Michigan, Washington "leads"
-Harriet/Bill call Ensign and Domenici

-White House OPA [Karl Rove's Office of Political Affairs] calls California, Michigan, Washington "leads"

There's a pattern to these stories, no?

UPDATE3 (March 25): Finally corrected the links to the Gonzopedia, the Sourcewatch page on Catherine Martin, and the Evergreen Politics article on John McKay.

Taylor Marsh has an update on Elizabeth Edwards' condition. I think the short version is "not good, but not dire".

Over at TPM Muckraker, Paul Kiel has an article he titles Today's Must Read. He's referring to an article in the Los Angeles Times about Kevin Ryan, one of the eight U.S. Attorneys fired last December. He writes:

It's almost too perfect. The only U.S. attorney fired by the administration in December who undeniably had performance issues was begrudingly added to the list at the last minute -- and only then because of a federal judge's threat that he would go to Congress with complaints about the prosecutor's performance.

Today's Must Read

From what we've entered into the Gonzopedia thus far about Kevin Ryan, it's pretty clear that he had a tin ear for politics, given that he was a Bush Loyalist:

The Los Angeles Times tells the story of San Francisco's Kevin Ryan today, who, as the scandal over the firings began to simmer early this year, telephoned the Justice Department to assure them that he's still a "company man."

Today's Must Read

Kiel also cites a USA Today article from last week's USA Today, in which Ryan was mentioned as being the only one of the eight prosecutors David Comey, who was the Deputy Attorney General through 2005, was also ready to fire for incompetence. This seems to be a sharp contrast with Kyle Sampson, who was the AG's chief of staff last year.

In principle, the former Justice official says, Comey was not opposed to removing incompetent people.

However, Comey's definition of incompetence turned out to be quite different from Sampson's and had nothing to do with politics, says the former official. And the only one of the fired group Comey had identified as weak was Kevin Ryan, the U.S. attorney in San Francisco. But Sampson put Ryan on his list of top prosecutors.

Ashcroft Aide Sought to ID Weak U.S. Attorneys

Lynn Allen at Evergreen Politics has written an article on the coming Constitutional crisis. Another must read, I'd say. For my part, I was sure this was coming, but I figured it should have been over Iraq. But, as we said in the Nixon years, whatever works.

UPDATE: Corrected Kyle Sampson's role in the DoJ. I'd erroneously identified him as the Deputy AG.