The latest on Gonzo

I was going to do a most on William W. Mercer's decision to spend more time at his other job and what it meant to Abu Gonzales and his "Justice" Department but my friend The Gun Toting Liberal did it for me. Check it out!

Running out of delegees

Judging from the testimony of "AG" Alberto Gonzales he had delegated the entire job to others and really didn't have a clue as to what was going on in the Justice Department. Well another one of the delegees quit today.
Official close to attorney firings quits

WASHINGTON — A senior Justice Department official who helped carry out the dismissals of federal prosecutors said Friday he is resigning. Mike Elston, chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, is the fifth Justice official to leave after being linked to the dismissals of the prosecutors.

Elston was accused of threatening at least four of the eight fired U.S. attorneys to keep quiet about their ousters. In a statement Friday, the Justice Department said Elston was leaving voluntarily to take a job with an unnamed Washington-area law firm.

The firings have led to congressional investigations, an internal Justice Department inquiry and calls on Capitol Hill for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

He probably needed to make more money to pay for all those attorneys he thinks he might need.

Since no one in their right mind would go to work for the Gonzales Justice Department it may become necessary for Gonzo to do the job himself soon. Maybe that will be enough to convince him to quit so he can continue to spend time with his family.

Lawless

I discussed Harry Reid's attempt to halt the Bush Administration's political "recess appointments below. It seemed like a good idea but Dr. Steven Taylor and others point out that the Constitution is not clear on this and that Bush may just decide he can do ti anyway.

Reid may be basing his ten-day cycle on a 1921 Attorney General opinion that a ten day gap was likely too short a recess, but a 1993 DoJ briefing argued for a gap of as small as 3 days. I noted these opinions here. James notes a number of recess appointments made during brief recesses (as short as 11 days).

My guess is that President Bush would be willing, based on his track record, to make a recess appointment for a recess of 24 hours, and then seek to fight it out with the Senate. As such, James is right: this won’t work.

The New York Times has an editorial this morning, Why This Scandal Matters, talking about the US Attorney Purge and the Justice Department.

Justice Department headquarters has become deeply partisan. Young operatives like Ms. Goodling were apparently allowed to hire and promote based on party membership. Political appointees cleared the way for laws designed to disenfranchise minority voters, and brought litigation to remove Democratic-leaning voters from the rolls.

The department’s integrity lies in tatters. As a result of the purge, Tim Griffin, a Republican operative and Karl Rove protégé, was installed as the top federal prosecutor in eastern Arkansas. Rachel Paulose, a 33-year-old Republican activist with thin prosecutorial experience, was assigned to Minnesota. If either indicted a prominent Democrat tomorrow, everyone would believe it was a political hit.

Congress has to save the Justice Department, something President Bush shows no interest in doing. It should pass a resolution of “no confidence” in Mr. Gonzales, and push for his removal. But it also needs to insist on new leadership that will restore the department’s traditions of professionalism and impartiality, and re-establish that in the United States, the legal system does not work to advance the interests of a political party.

That sounds really good but the reality is Bush will simply ignore the congress if they attempt to make DOJ the justice department for all Americans not just the Republican Party.

I have not been a supporter of the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney but it is becoming obvious that the only way to end the lawlessness in the White House is to remove them from office in the only way the constitution allows. And I'm not just talking about Alberto Gonzales.

A quick message to the Democrats who control both the House and the Senate: the only thing you can do that George W. Bush will pay any attention to is impeachment. Anything else you try to do is a waste of time so don't bother.

Rope-a-dope!

Perhaps they are looking ahead to the Hillary Clinton Presidency but even the conservative Chicago Tribune editorial board is none to pleased with the Gonzales/Rove Justice Department.
More stonewalling at Justice

The controversy over the removal of several U.S. attorneys last year has been spreading by the week. But Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales sees no reason to change his approach, which is modeled on Muhammad Ali's famous rope-a-dope.

At a hearing last week before the House Judiciary Committee, he evaded precise answers and professed a poor memory, while insisting that the decision to sack the prosecutors was utterly sound. The apparent administration hope is that by denying and stonewalling, Gonzales can not only save his job but eventually exhaust all interest in the matter.

This is not good enough. Serious charges have been leveled that undermine public confidence in federal law enforcement, and they have not been convincingly rebutted. To continue to try to shrug off the issue will only deepen suspicions that this administration has taken justice out of the Justice Department.

The purge of prosecutors looks increasingly like an effort to turn U.S. attorneys into arms of the Republican National Committee. Some of the eight prosecutors known to have been fired last year had antagonized White House political adviser Karl Rove and GOP politicians by failing to pursue cases that could have affected last year's election outcome.

[......]

If you are still inclined to give Gonzales the benefit of the doubt on something he claims to have left mostly to subordinates, consider the testimony of his former deputy attorney general, James Comey. He told the Judiciary Committee that he had a "very positive" opinion of most of the U.S. attorneys who were dismissed, and that only one of the firings was warranted.

He was even more disturbed by charges that a former aide to Gonzales, Monica Goodling, used political criteria in the hiring of career prosecutors. Besides being a possible violation of federal law, that alleged practice would have a terribly corrosive effect. If it occurred, said Comey, "it deprives the department of its lifeblood, which is the ability to stand up and have juries of all stripes believe what you say and have sheriffs and judges and jailers -- the people we deal with -- trust the Department of Justice."

Americans apparently will get to hear from Goodling, who had refused to answer questions before Congress for fear of incriminating herself. Last week, a federal judge gave her immunity from prosecution and said she must testify if called. Members of Congress should also get to hear sworn testimony from Rove and other White House aides, which President Bush has refused to allow. And it's anyone's guess whether the resignation of Deputy Atty. Gen. Paul McNulty, announced Monday, is connected to the controversy. McNulty had admitted giving Congress faulty information about the firings.

Because of these developments, public trust in the department is in serious jeopardy. The president and the attorney general now have the burden of demonstrating that the administration acted properly in this episode. So far, they show no sign of being able to.

The media initially saw this as a non-story and it was up to alternative media mogul Josh Marshall to keep it alive. Now it's a front page story nearly everyday and even the conservative media is asking some tough questions.

Was She Acting On Her Own?

Does It Really Matter?

Colleagues Cite Partisan Focus by Justice Official

WASHINGTON, May 11 — Two years ago, Robin C. Ashton, a seasoned criminal prosecutor at the Department of Justice, learned from her boss that a promised promotion was no longer hers.

“You have a Monica problem,” Ms. Ashton was told, according to several Justice Department officials. Referring to Monica M. Goodling, a 31-year-old, relatively inexperienced lawyer who had only recently arrived in the office, the boss added, “She believes you’re a Democrat and doesn’t feel you can be trusted.”

Ms. Ashton’s ouster — she left the Executive Office for United States Attorneys for another Justice Department post two weeks later — was a critical early step in a plan that would later culminate in the ouster of nine United States attorneys last year.

Ms. Goodling would soon be quizzing applicants for civil service jobs at Justice Department headquarters with questions that several United States attorneys said were inappropriate, like who was their favorite president and Supreme Court justice. One department official said an applicant was even asked, “Have you ever cheated on your wife?”

Ms. Goodling also moved to block the hiring of prosecutors with résumés that suggested they might be Democrats, even though they were seeking posts that were supposed to be nonpartisan, two department officials said.

And she helped maintain lists of all the United States attorneys that graded their loyalty to the Bush administration, including work on past political campaigns, and noted if they were members of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group.

By the time Ms. Goodling resigned in April — after her role in the firing of the prosecutors became public and she had been promoted to the role of White House liaison — she and other senior department officials had revamped personnel practices affecting employees from the top of the agency to the bottom.

I suspect she was largely acting on her own when it came to the lower level employee decisions but was taking orders from the Rove White House when it came to the US Attorneys themselves.

So who and what is Monica Goodling? I think she is what Bob Altemeyer would call an authoritarian follower.

Authoritarian followers usually support the established authorities in their society, such as government officials and traditional religious leaders. Such people have historically been the "proper" authorities in life, the time-honored, entitled, customary leaders, and that means a lot to most authoritarians. Psychologically these followers have personalities featuring:
1) a high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in their society;
2) high levels of aggression in the name of their authorities; and
3) a high level of conventionalism.
Because the submission occurs to traditional authority, I call these followers right-wing authoritarians.

This brings us to one of the most important facts about Monica. Sandy Levinson at Balkinization explains:

Still, the story walks on eggs with regard to one of the most important aspects of Ms. Goodling, her religious zeal. Lipton mentions that she graduated from Regent Law School, '99, and notes that that is Pat Robertson's law school. But there has still been no genuine examination of the extent to which Ms. Goodling used her remarkable clout within the Justice Department to focus on hiring not only conservative Republicans, but also persons who were equally opposed to what she no doubt believes is the sinful secularism of modern society.

Disciples of charismatic religious leaders like Pat Robertson are trained to not question authority - are by their very nature "authoritarian followers". This makes them very useful to secular authoritarians like Karl Rove. If Monica Goodling had any knowledge of Constitutional Law and theory, which is doubtful considering her educational background, it would be displaced by the wishes of the authoritarians she worked for. The story of Monica Goodling is not so much about the purge of US Attorneys as it is about the danger of the religious right in government.

Will she sing....

....or do a Sergeant Schultz?
Goodling Granted Immunity in DOJ Probe

A federal judge approved an immunity deal Friday allowing former Justice Department aide Monica Goodling to testify before Congress about the firing of eight federal prosecutors.


Goodling, who served as the department's White House liaison, has refused to discuss the firings without a guarantee that she will not be prosecuted. Congress agreed to the deal, Justice Department investigators reluctantly agreed not to not oppose it and U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan gave it final approval Friday.


"Monica Goodling may not refuse to testify," Hogan began his brief order, which said that Goodling could not be prosecuted for anything other than perjury in connection with her testimony.


Lawmakers want to question Goodling as part of an inquiry into whether the Justice Department played politics with the hiring and firing of department officials. What began as an inquiry into whether U.S. attorneys were fired for political reasons has grown to include the role of the White House in the firings and whether the Justice Department officials misled Congress about them.


Goodling's lawyer has said that, with an immunity seal, she would cooperate and testify honestly.

So will that "honest" testimony finger Rove or will Monica have a series of memory lapses?

Update
The commissar thinks she will sing.

So, will Ms. Goodling, who was in a position to know, spill the beans about Purge-gate, or will hearing be another I-dont-remember-fest? There are too many possible ways to read the tea leaves, but it seems to me likely that she made a deal with Congress, and will talk forthrightly. If so, it should be very enlightening.

Did Karl Rove mess with the wrong guys?

The politically motivated firings of US Attorneys scandal just won't die. It's not too surprising that they fired the best of the best - the attorneys that wouldn't let their positions be politicized. Some of the fired attorneys are meeting in Seattle and they predict that
Charges may result from firings, say two former U.S. attorneys

Two former U.S. attorneys said today they believe ongoing investigations into the dismissals last year of eight federal prosecutors could result in criminal charges against senior Justice Department officials.

John McKay, the former U.S. attorney for Western Washington, and David Iglesias, the former U.S. attorney for New Mexico, also said they believe White House political operative Karl Rove and his aides instigated the dismissals and ultimately decided who among the nation's 93 U.S. attorneys should be fired.

McKay and Iglesias, who were among those fired, made their assertions during a meeting this morning with Seattle Times editors and reporters. The two are scheduled to appear this afternoon along with Paul Charlton, the former U.S. attorney for Arizona, during a public-policy forum on the dismissals at Seattle University's School of Law.

"I think there will be a criminal case that will come out of this," McKay said during his meeting with Times journalists. "This is going to get worse, not better."

And this is interesting, shortly after Alberto Gonzales became Attorney General John McKay saw some warning signs.

McKay said he began to have concerns about politics entering the Justice Department in early 2005, when Gonzales addressed all of the country's U.S. attorneys in Scottsdale, Ariz., shortly after he took over as attorney general.

"His first speech to us was a 'you work for the White House' speech," McKay recalled. " 'I work for the White House, you work for the White House.' "

McKay said he thought at the time, "He couldn't have meant that speech," given the traditional independence of U.S. Attorneys. "It turns out he did."

He looked around the meeting room and caught the eyes of his colleagues, who gave him looks of surprise at Gonzales' remarks. "We were stunned at what he was saying."

I guess these Republican attorneys had not been paying much attention to the White House before - nothing they do doesn't involve politics and loyalty.

The American Taliban

I am an atheist but until recently a tolerant one. You can believe whatever magic makes you feel good. I had no trouble with "In God We Trust" on money, manager scenes on public property or even the Ten Commandments. But when the Radical Christians began to take over the government of this secular nation with the help and encouragement of Karl Rove and the Bush administration it became too much.
Goodling Shed Tears Before Revelations About Firings

A former U.S. Justice Department official and central figure in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys tearfully told a colleague two months ago her government career probably was over as the matter was about to erupt into a political storm, according to closed-door congressional testimony.

Monica Goodling, at the time an aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, sobbed for 45 minutes in the office of career Justice Department official David Margolis on March 8 as she related her fears that she would have to quit, according to congressional aides briefed on Margolis's private testimony to House and Senate investigators. The aides spoke on condition of anonymity.

Margolis's description of the emotional scene in his office sheds new light on divisions that were developing in the Justice Department's Washington headquarters as the Democratic-controlled Congress was demanding documents that might show White House involvement in the dismissals.

Goodling, 33, who was Gonzales's White House liaison, resigned April 6 and has invoked her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination to refuse to answer lawmakers' questions about her role in the firings. Her lawyers cited accusations by Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty that Goodling and others had misled him about the firings as a basis for refusing to testify.

Compelled Testimony

The House Judiciary Committee has voted to compel her testimony by granting limited immunity from prosecution. Goodling may have signaled in a letter yesterday -- sent by her lawyers to the Justice Department -- that she is eager to tell Congress her side of the story.

The letter noted that the Justice Department, which is conducting its own inquiry into whether Goodling improperly considered the political affiliation of applicants to be prosecutors, is powerless to block the congressional grant of immunity.

Now there was a time before George W. Bush when the DOJ would be staffed by people form the finest law schools in the country. Now many of not most are from the fourth tier Regent University School of Law, founded by televangelist Pat Robertson. Yes that would include Ms Goodling who was crying because she was about to lose a job she should have never had in the first place.

Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe tells us about Regent University in
Scandal puts spotlight on Christian law school

The title of the course was Constitutional Law, but the subject was sin. Before any casebooks were opened, a student led his classmates in a 10-minute devotional talk, completed with "amens," about the need to preserve their Christian values.

"Sin is so appealing because it's easy and because it's fun," the law student warned.

Regent University School of Law, founded by televangelist Pat Robertson to provide "Christian leadership to change the world," has worked hard in its two-decade history to upgrade its reputation, fighting past years when a majority of its graduates couldn't pass the bar exam and leading up to recent victories over Ivy League teams in national law student competitions.

But even in its darker days, Regent has had no better friend than the Bush administration. Graduates of the law school have been among the most influential of the more than 150 Regent University alumni hired to federal government positions since President Bush took office in 2001, according to a university website.

One of those graduates is Monica Goodling , the former top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who is at the center of the storm over the firing of US attorneys. Goodling, who resigned on Friday, has become the face of Regent overnight -- and drawn a harsh spotlight to the administration's hiring of officials educated at smaller, conservative schools with sometimes marginal academic reputations.

This is a very big part of the Bush administration's attempt to dismantle our form of government and much greater threat than al-Qaeda or the Taliban could ever be. Make Monica testify and make it uncomfortable and if she won't cooperate - throw her to the lions.

Gonzo-Gate, The shoes just keep dropping

In perhaps what is the most blatant example of DOJ interference in an investigation for political reasons the Wall Street Journal reports:
Delays in Renzi Case Raise
More Gonzales Questions

WASHINGTON -- As midterm elections approached last November, federal investigators in Arizona faced unexpected obstacles in getting needed Justice Department approvals to advance a corruption investigation of Republican Rep. Rick Renzi, people close to the case said.


The delays, which postponed key approvals in the case until after the election, raise new questions about whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales or other officials may have weighed political issues in some investigations. The Arizona U.S. attorney then overseeing the case, Paul Charlton, was told he was being fired in December, one of eight federal prosecutors dismissed in the past year. The dismissals have triggered a wave of criticism and calls from Congress for Mr. Gonzales to resign.

Investigators pursuing the Renzi case had been seeking clearance from senior Justice Department officials on search warrants, subpoenas and other legal tools for a year before the election, people close to the case said.

And we have another example of how the Republicans may no longer be willing to defend the criminal activities of the Bush administration:
House Panel Votes to Give Gonzales Aide Immunity

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A House committee voted Wednesday to grant immunity to Monica Goodling, a key aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales during the firings of eight U.S. attorneys. She had refused to testify, invoking her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

The 32-6 vote by the House Judiciary Committee surpassed the 2/3 majority required to grant a witness immunity from prosecution. A separate vote to authorize a subpoena for Goodling passed by voice vote.

Are we rapidly reaching the point where any support for the Bush administration is seen as lethally radioactive by Republicans who must run for reelection in 2008?

Update
Steve Soto has some questions for Monica Goodling.
Time To Come To Jesus, Monica

Should the boss be satisfied?

The headline in The New York Times this morning reads:
At Least the Boss Was Satisfied by Gonzales’s Answers

WASHINGTON, April 23 — President Bush said Monday that the Congressional testimony of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales last week, roundly panned by members of both parties, had “increased my confidence in his ability to do the job.”

Speaking during a short question-and-answer session in the Oval Office, Mr. Bush said of Mr. Gonzales’s performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, “The attorney general went up and gave a very candid assessment, and answered every question he could possibly answer, honestly answer.”

Mr. Bush has repeatedly asserted his confidence in Mr. Gonzales, a longtime adviser, as criticism has mounted over the dismissals of eight United States attorneys.

But his statement on Monday was his first direct comment about Mr. Gonzales since the attorney general appeared before the committee, and it was at considerable odds with an overwhelmingly critical assessment of his testimony by members of both parties. It indicated that Mr. Bush, at least for now, has concluded his attorney general can weather the challenge to his leadership at the Justice Department, barring any evidence of wrongdoing.

While few others shared Mr Bush's feelings Dahlia Lithwick wonders if maybe Alberto Gonzales was brilliant.

Perhaps what we witnessed yesterday was in fact a tour de force, a home run for the president's overarching theory of the unitary executive.

The theory of the unitary executive is a radical vision of executive power in which the president is the big boss of the entire executive branch and has final say over everything that happens within it. At its core, the theory holds that Congress has very limited authority to divest the president of those powers. An expanded version of this theory was the legal predicate for the torture memo: "In light of the president's complete authority over the conduct of war, without a clear statement otherwise, criminal statutes are not read as infringing on the president's ultimate authority in these areas. … Congress may no more regulate the president's ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield."

[.....]

If you watch the Gonzales hearing through this prism (and in this White House, even the bathroom windows look out through that prism), they were a triumph. For six impressive hours, the attorney general embodied the core principles that he is not beholden to Congress, that the Senate has no authority over him, and that he was only there as a favor to them in their funny little fact-finding mission.

Consider how Gonzales rebuffed Republican Sen. John Cornyn when he suggested a future Senate hearing about the convictions of two Texas border patrol officers. (That's executive branch business, son.) Consider the attorney general's inability to explain why Kyle Sampson pushed ahead with a plan to do away with Senate confirmation for U.S. attorneys, if as he claimed, Gonzales didn't approve it. (That's between me and the president and Kyle Sampson, son.) Consider Gonzales' skirmish with Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer over who bore the burden of proof at the hearings. (How can there be a burden of proof when you have no authority to sit in judgment over me, son?) And listen to him tell Republican Sen. Charles Grassley: "I'm here to provide what I know, what I recall as to the truth in order to help the Congress help to complete the record."

While he was not saying very much he was telling the Senators that they don't matter. They have no power over King George - he is "the decider" and what they think really doesn't matter.

There may be some truth to that but I still believe that like his boss Alberto Gonazales is an incompetent moron.

Gonzales and the myth of "at will employment"

Ed Morrisey has an excellent post that puts the US Attorney Purge and the incompetence of Alberto Gonzales in realistic perspective. Like me Ed has been an employer and explains that "at will employment" is a myth. Before you can fire someone it takes weeks or even months to get all your ducks in a row. If you don't you will open yourself up to expensive legal problems. Go read the entire thing but Ed concludes with this:

Now, we have heard that the President has the ability to fire any of these prosecutors at any time, for whatever reason he sees fit, as long as it isn't to obstruct justice. That's true. It presupposes some kind of reason, however; one shouldn't fire people without having a reason. So what were the reasons for firing each of these people? Even Gonzales couldn't explain them after a month of research and preparation for this hearing. He offered some performance issues, but couldn't say whether he had ever communicated those issues to the attorneys themselves before or during the terminations. And regardless of the political nature of the appointments, the AG and the White House had to know that people would ask questions about the rather unprecedented terminations -- and it's obvious that despite their planning, they had no good or consistent response to them.

Gonzo the Incompetent

Gonzo had his day in court today and Faced Anger From Both Sides on Senate Panel.

WASHINGTON, April 19 — Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales encountered anger and skepticism from senators today as he insisted that he had nothing to hide in the dismissals of eight United States attorneys, an episode that has cast a shadow on the Justice Department and brought calls for his resignation.

“I am here today to do my part to ensure that all facts about this matter are brought to light,” he told the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning, noting that the panel’s inquiry into the dismissals had already yielded thousands of pages of internal departmental communications and hours of interviews with department officials.

“These are not the actions of someone with something to hide,” Mr. Gonzales said in his opening remarks.

His reception from Democrats and Republicans alike, at a hearing that was widely seen as a make-or-break event, did not seem to augur well for Mr. Gonzales. But at the end of the day, the White House issued a statement that President Bush thought Mr. Gonzales’s testimony had gone well, and that he had “full confidence” in the attorney general.

Note that his equally incompetent boss thought things "had gone well" which would indicate he didn't really watch it or he is even more divorced from reality than we thought.

While there may not be any agreement on the claims that the AG firings were politically motivated there did seem to be almost universal agreement that Gonzo is an incompetent boob. Gonzo gave no indication that he will voluntarily step down and the President gave no indication he was going to show him the door.

Update
One of the rational members of the right, Ed Morrisey, sums up the Republican reaction pretty well.

That doesn't mean the Justice staff fired the prosecutors for improper reasons, but it does say something about Gonzales' competence. And even with hindsight, he still couldn't come up with a good reason for two of the seven.

What does all of this mean? It means that Gonzales is toast. One can write off Senators like Specter and Graham, but Tom Coburn is part of the conservative backbone in the Senate. That is a clear message to the White House to start placing ads in the paper for the upcoming opening in senior management.

Nothing Improper - My Ass

Alberto Gonzales makes a lame attempt to justify his actions and previous testimony in a WAPO commentary today.

My decision some months ago to privately seek the resignations of a small number of U.S. attorneys has erupted into a public firestorm. First and foremost, I appreciate the public service of these fine lawyers and dedicated professionals, each of whom served his or her full four-year term as U.S. attorney. I apologize to them, their families and the thousands of dedicated professionals at the Justice Department for my role in allowing this matter to spin into an undignified Washington spectacle.

What began as a well-intentioned management effort to identify where, among the 93 U.S. attorneys, changes in leadership might benefit the department, and therefore the American people, has become an unintended public controversy.

I'm sure the "unintended public controversy" part is true. Gonzos sin is not so much what he did do but what he didn't do - keep the DOJ separate from the politics of the White House. He effectively was little more than a rubber stamp for Karl Rove's evil political activities. Marty Lederman is right when he talks about The Misplaced Focus on Gonzales. This has Karl Roves fingerprints all over it. Yes Gonzo is gone but that is just the beginning not the end of the story.

Arlan Specter on ABC's This Week had this to say:

Specter said Gonzales must explain the firing the U.S. attorneys case by case — and convince senators they were not done to interfere with or promote ongoing criminal investigations aimed at benefiting Republicans.

If he is unable to do so, Gonzales should consider reinstating the fired prosecutors, Specter said.

While a president has a right to replace U.S. attorneys for no reason at all, "you can't replace them for a bad reason," he said.

"The No. 1 question is, is he capable of administering the Department of Justice, did he have enough hands on to know what's happening? Can he explain why these individuals were asked to resign and justify the reasons for doing so?" Specter said.

It should be obvious that the answer to "The No. 1 question" is no.

Update
Josh Marshall has a must read piece on the David Iglesias firing and how that be be what brings the entire house of cards down. The Iglesias firing can be tied directly to Karl Rove and the Bush administration. Go read it.

Lies - Scandals - Incompetence

Very few Americans want to return to the feudal society of 15th century Europe. That said the current Republican party should not be able to win any elections. But of course they do. They do it with lies and scandalous activities. Today in his commentary Paul Krugman addresses the lies.
Sweet Little Lies

Four years into a war fought to eliminate a nonexistent threat, we all have renewed appreciation for the power of the Big Lie: people tend to believe false official claims about big issues, because they can’t picture their leaders being dishonest about such things.

But there’s another political lesson I don’t think has sunk in: the power of the Little Lie — the small accusation invented out of thin air, followed by another, and another, and another. Little Lies aren’t meant to have staying power. Instead, they create a sort of background hum, a sense that the person facing all these accusations must have done something wrong.

For a long time, basically from 9/11 until the last remnants of President Bush’s credibility drowned in New Orleans, the Bush administration was able to go big on its deceptions. Most people found it inconceivable that an American president would, for example, assert without evidence that Saddam and Al Qaeda were allies. Mr. Bush won the 2004 election because a quorum of voters still couldn’t believe he would grossly mislead them on matters of national security.

Before 9/11, however, the right-wing noise machine mainly relied on little lies. And now it has returned to its roots.

The Clinton years were a parade of fake scandals: Whitewater, Troopergate, Travelgate, Filegate, Christmas-card-gate. At the end, there were false claims that Clinton staff members trashed the White House on their way out.

Each pseudoscandal got headlines, air time and finger-wagging from the talking heads. The eventual discovery in each case that there was no there there, if reported at all, received far less attention. The effect was to make an administration that was, in fact, pretty honest and well run — especially compared with its successor — seem mired in scandal.

As Krugman points out even when the lies are shown to be lies the damage is done and the press that was quick to report them is slow to report that they were indeed lies. The Republican lie machine could not work with out the aid of the so called liberal press.

With the now infamous Attorney Purge the little lies are becoming scandals. We return to the New York Times.
Another Layer of Scandal

As Congress investigates the politicization of the United States attorney offices by the Bush administration, it should review the extraordinary events the other day in a federal courtroom in Wisconsin. The case involved Georgia Thompson, a state employee sent to prison on the flimsiest of corruption charges just as her boss, a Democrat, was fighting off a Republican challenger. It just might shed some light on a question that lurks behind the firing of eight top federal prosecutors: what did the surviving attorneys do to escape the axe?

Ms. Thompson, a purchasing official in the state’s Department of Administration, was accused by the United States attorney in Milwaukee, Steven Biskupic, of awarding a travel contract to a company whose chief executive contributed to the campaign of Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat. Ms. Thompson said the decision was made on the merits, but she was convicted and sent to prison before she could appeal.

The prosecution was a boon to Mr. Doyle’s opponent. Republicans ran a barrage of attack ads that purported to tie Ms. Thompson’s “corruption” to Mr. Doyle. Ms. Thompson was sentenced shortly before the election, which Governor Doyle won.

The Chicago-based United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit seemed shocked by the injustice of her conviction. It took the extraordinary step of releasing Ms. Thompson from prison immediately after hearing arguments, without waiting to issue a ruling. One of the judges hinted that Ms. Thompson may have been railroaded. “It strikes me that your evidence is beyond thin,” Judge Diane Wood told the lawyer from Mr. Biskupic’s office.

Ms. Thompson’s case is not the only one raising questions about whether prosecutors tried last year to tilt close elections toward the Republicans. New Jersey’s federal prosecutor conducted an investigation of weak-looking allegations against Senator Robert Menendez that was used in Republican ads.

Congress should look into both cases to determine whether partisan politics played a role — and whether they were coordinated with anyone at the Justice Department or the White House.

The first question many of us asked when the eight attorneys were fired was what about the 85 that didn't get fired? It is looking like this was an excellent question. It may be more important to investigate the attorneys who were allowed to stay - the "loyal Bushies".

The only upside to all of this is that an incompetent president has surrounded himself with equally incompetent people. The result is that all of this scandal has seen the light of day. Of course we have also seen the downside with the Katrina disaster and the cadre of young unskilled cultists who were sent to Iraq and made a bad situation worse.

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This article contains copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material available in my efforts to advance understanding of democracy, economic, environmental, human rights, political, scientific, and social justice issues, among others. I believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material in this article is distributed without profit for research and educational purposes.

This post by Steve Soto is about Prosecutor Purge-gate I covered below but it qualifies for the anti-theocracy blogswarm I think.
No Escape, Monica

Attorney Purge-gate News

Monica Goodling is back in the news today.
Gonzales aide in firings controversy resigns

WASHINGTON - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' top aide, who refused to testify before Congress about her role in the politically charged firing of eight U.S. attorneys, abruptly quit her job Friday.

"I am hereby submitting my resignation to the office of attorney general," Monica M. Goodling said in a three-sentence letter. There was no immediate reason given for her departure, but Goodling's refusal to face Congress intensified a controversy that threatens Gonzales' job.

Asserting her right under the U.S. Constitution not to incriminate herself, Goodling rejected demands last month for a private interview with a House of Representatives committee investigating the firings.

Since one thing most of the fired US Attorneys had in common was they refused to use their office for Rovian style politics many of us asked; what about the 85 that didn't get fired? Well we are getting some answers to that question.
Ex-state official freed
Judge calls evidence she steered travel contract 'beyond thin'

Federal judges Thursday ruled that former state purchasing supervisor Georgia L. Thompson was wrongly convicted of making sure a state travel contract went to a firm linked to Gov. Jim Doyle's re-election campaign and freed her from an Illinois prison.

During 26 minutes of oral arguments, all three judges assailed the government's case, with Judge Diane Wood saying at one point that "the evidence is beyond thin."

During a news conference later Thursday, Doyle, a former state attorney general, said the three judges did an "extraordinary thing" by entering an order finding Thompson innocent and ordering her immediate release.

Decisions at that level of the federal judicial system usually take weeks or months after oral arguments.

Thompson, 57, will remain free on a signature bond until the appeals court issues its written decision.

The commissar writing in the comments section of his own post sums it up nicely.

Georgia Thompson was clearly railroaded by a politically-motivated US Attorney.

As far as Fieger goes, there is such a thing as “a pattern of behavior.” When the DOJ has been as thoroughly politicized as it has been, at some point the burden of proof swings the other way.

And there is a related point, i.e. that every “loud-mouth” Democrat who has been prosecuted by one of the ‘loyal 85′ is going to challenge such prosecution. How many of these “guilty loudmouths” will walk?

Patrick, I repeat my initial email. You are making a mistake by investing your credibility on this. I cannot even keep up with the explosion of rot that has infested the DOJ. Today, the assistant USAs to Rachel Palouse took demotions or quit.

This whole issue is going to blow up, far bigger than it is today, The admin’s defenders (and I include the LA Times-ellipsis-bashers in there) are going to look foolish.

And speaking of Rachel Palouse, this is what that's all about.
3 federal prosecutors quit manager posts

In a surprising move, three top lawyers in the Minnesota U.S. Attorney's Office resigned their management positions Thursday and will return to prosecuting cases.
The resignations of the first assistant U.S. attorney, who is second in command, and the chiefs of both the criminal and civil divisions of the office, were communicated internally late Thursday afternoon, according to a source with direct knowledge of the events. The job changes followed a visit to the office by a representative from the Executive Office of the U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C.

U.S. Sen. Charles E. Schumer, who chairs a Senate subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts, issued a harsh statement Friday after learning of the resignations.

"This is another example of the proud corps of U.S. Attorneys being deprofessionalized," Schumer said. "We wonder in how many other offices the same lack of confidence is taking its toll. Attorney General [Alberto] Gonzales has a responsibility to see that the finest people are put in these positions, not simply cronies."

The resignations are certain to raise questions, especially in light of the controversy surrounding Gonzales and the way the Bush administration replaced eight U.S. attorneys around the country since August.

Minnesota's U.S. Attorney, Rachel Paulose, took the job in March 2006. No one has linked her to the controversy in Washington.

"It's just absolutely extraordinary that these three top managers would voluntarily demote themselves," said one defense attorney knowledgeable about the office. "I mean, it's a rank cut. ... And then it would be a salary cut, too."

A source familiar with the office said Thursday's resignations were more about management style and communication than politics. But they take on added significance because they follow a number of other managers who have voluntarily stepped aside since Paulose took over.

Welcome to Gonzo's world.

Banana Republic Democracy

Rising income inequality is a threat to the robber barons (AKA Republican Party) in a Democracy. The people won't stand for it. So what is a robber baron to do. Fix the system - disenfranchise voters and distract voters - the "war on terror". The distraction is not working like it used to so disenfranchising has become all the more important. In his column today Paul Krugman explains that is what's really behind the US Attorney Purge.
Distract and Disenfranchise

In 1980, when Ronald Reagan won the White House, conservative ideas appealed to many, even most, Americans. At the time, we were truly a middle-class nation. To white voters, at least, the vast inequalities and social injustices of the past, which were what originally gave liberalism its appeal, seemed like ancient history. It was easy, in that nation, to convince many voters that Big Government was their enemy, that they were being taxed to provide social programs for other people.

Since then, however, we have once again become a deeply unequal society. Median income has risen only 17 percent since 1980, while the income of the richest 0.1 percent of the population has quadrupled. The gap between the rich and the middle class is as wide now as it was in the 1920s, when the political coalition that would eventually become the New Deal was taking shape.

And voters realize that society has changed. They may not pore over income distribution tables, but they do know that today’s rich are building themselves mansions bigger than those of the robber barons. They may not read labor statistics, but they know that wages aren’t going anywhere: according to the Pew Research Center, 59 percent of workers believe that it’s harder to earn a decent living today than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

You know that perceptions of rising inequality have become a political issue when even President Bush admits, as he did in January, that “some of our citizens worry about the fact that our dynamic economy is leaving working people behind.”

But today’s Republicans can’t respond in any meaningful way to rising inequality, because their activists won’t let them. You could see the dilemma just this past Friday and Saturday, when almost all the G.O.P. presidential hopefuls traveled to Palm Beach to make obeisance to the Club for Growth, a supply-side pressure group dedicated to tax cuts and privatization.

The Republican Party’s adherence to an outdated ideology leaves it with big problems. It can’t offer domestic policies that respond to the public’s real needs. So how can it win elections?

The answer, for a while, was a combination of distraction and disenfranchisement.

The distraction provided by 911 worked through 2004 but was no longer enough.

The terrorist attacks on 9/11 were themselves a massive, providential distraction; until then the public, realizing that Mr. Bush wasn’t the moderate he played in the 2000 election, was growing increasingly unhappy with his administration. And they offered many opportunities for further distractions. Rather than debating Democrats on the issues, the G.O.P. could denounce them as soft on terror. And do you remember the terror alert, based on old and questionable information, that was declared right after the 2004 Democratic National Convention?

But distraction can only go so far. So the other tool was disenfranchisement: finding ways to keep poor people, who tend to vote for the party that might actually do something about inequality, out of the voting booth.

Remember that disenfranchisement in the form of the 2000 Florida “felon purge,” which struck many legitimate voters from the rolls, put Mr. Bush in the White House in the first place. And disenfranchisement seems to be what much of the politicization of the Justice Department was about.

Several of the fired U.S. attorneys were under pressure to pursue allegations of voter fraud — a phrase that has become almost synonymous with “voting while black.” Former staff members of the Justice Department’s civil rights division say that they were repeatedly overruled when they objected to Republican actions, ranging from Georgia’s voter ID law to Tom DeLay’s Texas redistricting, that they believed would effectively disenfranchise African-American voters.

The good news is that all the G.O.P.’s abuses of power weren’t enough to win the 2006 elections. And 2008 may be even harder for the Republicans, because the Democrats — who spent most of the Clinton years trying to reassure rich people and corporations that they weren’t really populists — seem to be realizing that times have changed.

A week before the Republican candidates trooped to Palm Beach to declare their allegiance to tax cuts, the Democrats met to declare their commitment to universal health care. And it’s hard to see what the G.O.P. can offer in response.

This is what makes the Attorney Purge story so important, and probably why the corporate media tried to bury the story. It was not buried thanks to Josh Marshall and his crew and others in the blogosphere who wouldn't let it die.

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The Cultist

The Washington Post has a piece on Monica Goodling this morning that paints a picture of another Christian Soldier and cultist turned Bush loyalist. A graduate of Evangelical basic training and Pat Robertson's advanced training for young wingnuts who rose rapidly in the Bush administration because of loyalty.
Bush Loyalist Rose Quickly at Justice

Part of a generation of young religious conservatives who swept into the federal government after the election of President Bush in 2000, Goodling displayed unblinking devotion to the administration and expected others to do the same. When she started at Justice, "no job was too small for her," and as she moved rapidly up the ranks, none "was too large," Corallo said.

"She was the embodiment of a hardworking young conservative who believed strongly in the president and his mission," said David Ayres, former chief of staff to Bush's first attorney general, John D. Ashcroft.

This week, Goodling, 33, became the most prominent federal official to invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying before Congress since Lt. Col. Oliver L. North refused to answer questions -- until he received immunity -- during the 1986 Iran-contra hearings.

Goodling, now on an indefinite leave, most recently served as senior counsel to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and as Justice's liaison to the White House. Her name appears on several e-mails about the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are eager to ask her about those dismissals.

Explaining why she invoked her right against self-incrimination, her lawyer, John M. Dowd, called the investigation "hostile" and said that some committee members "have already reached conclusions."

So what was her mistake? According to her fellow cultists it wasn't what she did.

To her supporters, Goodling's only mistake -- if she made one at all -- was not anticipating the political peril before the 2006 midterm elections.

"The young conservatives who came off the campaign and were new to town with this administration, they've never seen lean times," said a veteran Republican political appointee who declined to be quoted by name saying anything critical of Goodling. "They had no appreciation for what would happen after the Democrats took control and how tough it would be."

So the only mistake she made was the same one Harold Meyerson talked about, she didn't recognize that things had changed.

The real mistake that Ms Goodling and many other young Republican Christians have made is they fail to recognize that the Pat Robertsons, Gerry Falwells and James Dobsons are not about spirituality or Jesus but about pure political power. Hence their unholy aliance with the Bush administration. Perhaps Ms Goodling needs a little jail time so she can find the real Jesus and discover what he taught and stood for.

More on Monica Goodling here.

Update
Rational Republican John Cole has a must read post on this:
Thank God For Chuck Schumer

The Real Danger

Kyle Sampson said today that Alberto R. Gonzales was lying when he said he was not involved in the dismissal of US Attorneys. This is not news. If they are members of the Bush administration and their lips are moving they are probably lying. It was what else Mr Sampson said that should have us very concerned and it's not just about the Attorney firings but the entire Republican idea of "governance".

In his opening remarks, Mr. Sampson, who appeared before the committee voluntarily, insisted that while the firings of eight United States attorneys had brought “confusion, misunderstanding and embarrassment” to the Justice Department, none of the eight had been dismissed for any improper reason.

Politics were involved but that's OK because they are political appointments.

He argued that the list of United States attorneys to be fired had been compiled with the involvement of “a number of senior Justice Department officials”; that the process, while not “scientific,” was also not “random or arbitrary”; and that the United States attorneys had been appropriately judged by management skills, relationships with other officials and “their support for the priorities of the president and the attorney general.”

“The distinction between political and performance-related reasons for removing a U.S. attorney is, in my view, largely artificial,” Mr. Sampson said.

So in a nutshell it's OK for those in power to use the US Judicial System for political ends - to impact elections. Sounds a bit like a banana republic to me. This is simply one more example of the contempt that what passes for the Republican Party holds the law and the constitution.

So Who is Monica Goodling?

As Ron Hutcheson of McClatchy explains she is a cultist and in the middle of the purge of US Attorneys.
Who is Monica Goodling?

Goodling, 33, is a 1995 graduate Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., an institution that describes itself as "committed to embracing an evangelical spirit."


She received her law degree at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va. Regent, founded by Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson, says its mission is "to produce Christian leaders who will make a difference, who will change the world."

Monica Goodling was a Pat Robertson cultist who was trained to be an unquestioning Republican cultist. Part of the collective insanity of the Evangelical Christian movement. And as a cultist/soldier she was a key player in the Prosecutor Purge.

E-mails show that Goodling was involved in planning the dismissals and in later efforts to limit the negative reaction. As the Justice Department's liaison to the White House, she could shed light on the extent of White House involvement in the dismissals.


Goodling took a leading role in making sure that Tim Griffin, a protege of presidential adviser Karl Rove, replaced H.E. "Bud" Cummins as the U.S. attorney in Arkansas. Documents released to Congress include communications between Goodling and Scott Jennings, Rove's deputy.


In an Aug. 18, 2006, e-mail to Kyle Sampson, then Gonzales' chief of staff, Goodling warned of potential political problems with Griffin's appointment and underscored White House interest in getting it done.


"We have a senator prob, so while wh is intent on nominating, scott thinks we may have a confirmation issue," Goodling wrote.


At Jennings' request, documents show, Goodling agreed to meet last summer with two Republican activists from New Mexico who felt that U.S. Attorney David Iglesias wasn't doing enough to pursue allegations of voter fraud by Democrats. Iglesias believes the issue was a key factor in his firing.


In a June 20 e-mail, Jennings asked Goodling to arrange a Justice Department meeting for New Mexico Republican Mickey Barnett, who came to Washington with Paul Rogers, another GOP activist.


"It is sensitive - perhaps you should do it," Jennings suggested.


"Happy to do so," Goodling replied. A copy of her daily planner, which was provided to congressional investigators, shows that she met with the two the next day.

It appears that MS Goodling may have been well advised to invoke the fifth.

More on Monica Goodling here.