"I have never before seen such consistent and marked disrespect on the part of the highest ranking government policymakers for both law and ethics"

this is worth posting in full...

Bush justice is a national disgrace
By John S. Koppel

The views presented in this essay are not representative of the Department of Justice or its employees but are instead the personal views of its author.

John S. Koppel has been a civil appellate attorney with the Department of Justice since 1981.

As a longtime attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, I can honestly say that I have never been as ashamed of the department and government that I serve as I am at this time.

The public record now plainly demonstrates that both the DOJ and the government as a whole have been thoroughly politicized in a manner that is inappropriate, unethical and indeed unlawful. The unconscionable commutation of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's sentence, the misuse of warrantless investigative powers under the Patriot Act and the deplorable treatment of U.S. attorneys all point to an unmistakable pattern of abuse.

In the course of its tenure since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has turned the entire government (and the DOJ in particular) into a veritable Augean stable on issues such as civil rights, civil liberties, international law and basic human rights, as well as criminal prosecution and federal employment and contracting practices. It has systematically undermined the rule of law in the name of fighting terrorism, and it has sought to insulate its actions from legislative or judicial scrutiny and accountability by invoking national security at every turn, engaging in persistent fearmongering, routinely impugning the integrity and/or patriotism of its critics, and protecting its own lawbreakers. This is neither normal government conduct nor "politics as usual," but a national disgrace of a magnitude unseen since the days of Watergate - which, in fact, I believe it eclipses.

In more than a quarter of a century at the DOJ, I have never before seen such consistent and marked disrespect on the part of the highest ranking government policymakers for both law and ethics. It is especially unheard of for U.S. attorneys to be targeted and removed on the basis of pressure and complaints from political figures dissatisfied with their handling of politically sensitive investigations and their unwillingness to "play ball." Enough information has already been disclosed to support the conclusion that this is exactly what happened here, at least in the case of former U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias of New Mexico (and quite possibly in several others as well). Law enforcement is not supposed to be a political team sport, and prosecutorial independence and integrity are not "performance problems."

In his long-awaited but uninformative testimony concerning the extraordinary firings of U.S. attorneys, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales did not allay these concerns. Indeed, he faced a no-win situation. If he testified falsely regarding his alleged lack of recollection and lack of involvement, he perjured himself and lied to both Congress and the American people. On the other hand, if he told the truth, he clearly has been derelict in the performance of his duties and is not up to the job. Either way, his fitness to serve is now in doubt.

Tellingly, in his congressional testimony, D. Kyle Sampson (the junior aide to whom the attorney general delegated vast authority) expressed the view that the distinction between "performance" considerations and "political" considerations was "largely artificial." This attitude, however, is precisely the problem. The administration that Sampson served has elided the distinction between government performance and politics to an unparalleled extent (just as it has blurred the boundaries between the White House counsel's office and the attorney general's office). And it is no answer to say that U.S. attorneys are political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president. The point that is lost on those who make this argument is that U.S. attorneys must not serve partisan purposes or advance a partisan agenda - which has nothing to do with requiring them to promote an administration's legitimate policy priorities.

As usual, the administration has attempted to minimize the significance of its malfeasance and misfeasance, reciting its now-customary "mistakes were made" mantra, accepting purely abstract responsibility without consequences for its actions, and making hollow vows to do better. However, the DOJ Inspector General's Patriot Act report (which would not even have existed if the administration had not been forced to grudgingly accept a very modest legislative reporting requirement, instead of being allowed to operate in its preferred secrecy), the White House-DOJ e-mails, and now the Libby commutation merely highlight yet again the lawlessness, incompetence and dishonesty of the present executive branch leadership.

They also underscore Congress' lack of wisdom in blindly trusting the administration, largely rubber-stamping its legislative proposals, and essentially abandoning the congressional oversight function for most of the last six years. These are, after all, the same leaders who brought us the WMD fiasco, the unnecessary and disastrous Iraq war, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, warrantless domestic NSA surveillance, the Valerie Wilson leak, the arrest of Brandon Mayfield, and the Katrina response failure. The last thing they deserve is trust.

The sweeping, judicially unchecked powers granted under the Patriot Act should neither have been created in the first place nor permanently renewed thereafter, and the Act - which also contributed to the ongoing contretemps regarding the replacement of U.S. attorneys, by changing the appointment process to invite political abuse - should be substantially modified, if not scrapped outright. And real, rather than symbolic, responsibility should be assigned for the manifold abuses. The public trust has been flagrantly violated, and meaningful accountability is long overdue. Officials who have brought into disrepute both the Department of Justice and the administration of justice as a whole should finally have to answer for it - and the misdeeds at issue involve not merely garden-variety misconduct, but multiple "high crimes and misdemeanors," including war crimes and crimes against humanity.

I realize that this constitutionally protected statement subjects me to a substantial risk of unlawful reprisal from extremely ruthless people who have repeatedly taken such action in the past. But I am confident that I am speaking on behalf of countless thousands of honorable public servants, at Justice and elsewhere, who take their responsibilities seriously and share these views. And some things must be said, whatever the risk.

i am proud to be an american when i see the kind of truth and courage displayed by mr. koppel... i realize he is putting his career on the line, but, dammit, that is what it's going to take to get these criminals out of the white house... their outlaw regime has been perfectly obvious for the past 6 1/2 years to anyone with two brain cells to rub together and i've been beginning to wonder who among those able to see from the inside what has been going on would find it in his or her heart to speak up... thank you, mr. koppel, for putting yourself out there, and thank you, denver post, for printing it... the united states needs all the help it can get right now...

(thanks to jcatcher at daily kos...)

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So many bread crumb trails to follow, but they all lead to the White House

think progress has a post up on an interview they conducted with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) regarding the source of the list of fired attorneys...

Whitehouse explained that tracking down who conceived of the list of fired U.S. attorneys was made much more difficult due to new rules employed by the Bush administration that greatly expanded the number of DoJ and White House employees that could talk to one another about criminal cases. During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in April, Whitehouse forced Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to admit previous firewalls between White House and DoJ staff had been torn down, allowing at least 400 White House officials and over 30 Justice officials to have discussions with one another about criminal cases.

that reminded me of the incredible visual whitehouse used to illustrate his point that i posted on in late april... at the time, my overwhelming impression was one of total chaos, but now i think it may very well have been created as a deliberate strategy for obfuscation...



whitehouse doesn't speculate on the deliberate strategy aspect, but he does see, as so many others have pointed out, all signs pointing to the white house...

WHITEHOUSE: So a Karl Rove to Kyle Sampson call about a case would have been out of bounds under the rules that had been developed for decades. Under the Bush Administration, they knocked down the rules, so there’s so many opportunities for that infiltration it’s hard to know where it came from. And that’s why I think we need to continue to pursue the investigation. By process of elimination if nobody in the Department of Justice knows where the list came from, then it may not have come from within the Department of Justice; it may have come from somewhere else. And given the likelihood here — it probably didn’t come from Congress; it probably didn’t come from the Governor of Iowa or, you know, the Mayor of Detroit. You can pretty well safely bet that the place that it came from was the White House.

follow those trails, guys...

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What an elected representative with INTEGRITY (and a REAL recovering alcoholic) looks like

talk about bringing the issue of voter fraud suppression down to earth... here you have not only THE definitive picture of what karl rove, scott jennings, susan ralston, alberto gonzales, monica goodling, kyle sampson, paul mcnulty, and the rest of the push-for-a-one-party-state crowd have been working so diligently to achieve, but also the clearest picture yet of what kind of a person it takes to stop it...

Against his doctor's advice, a stooped and feeble state Sen. Mario Gallegos Jr. (D) arrives at the Texas Capitol each day, just to make sure his chamber does not take up a bill that would require voters to produce identification at the polls.

[...]

Gallegos is putting his health at risk to block a measure he and others say could prevent many minorities and the elderly from taking part in elections in Texas.

[...]

The Republicans pushing the voter ID bill say illegal immigrants are voting in Texas elections and must be stopped. But Democrats say thousands of legal residents would lose the right to vote because they lack proper identification. Opponents of the measure -- including Gallegos, a Mexican American -- say minorities, the elderly and the poor are less likely than others to have driver's licenses or other documents.

Most of Gallegos's Houston-area constituents are black or Hispanic, and about a quarter of them live in poverty. About one in five speak little or no English.

Doctors say the senator, a recovering alcoholic, should be resting and should be within 100 miles of the hospital where he received the transplant. Austin is about 160 miles from the hospital in Houston.

Under what is known as the Luna Precedent, named for a lawmaker who was hospitalized in the 1990s, legislators can ask for 24 hours' notice that a bill is about to come up. Gallegos was given such notice early this month. But lawmakers can invoke the Luna Precedent only once during a session.

this is not only what a REAL recovering alcoholic looks like (as opposed to you-know-who), THIS is also what an elected representative of REAL integrity looks like, someone who will uphold the constitutional right to vote and never stop doing the job his constituents put him in office to do even if it means putting his own recovery from a liver transplant at risk... gallegos is not only a true hero but an authentic leader... we need lots more like him...

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U.S. Attorney firings - "The Immaculate Termination"

and here ya have it...

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Obstruction of justice and perjury: a two-fer for Gonzo?

obstruction of justice and perjury were the two thoughts that kept circulating in my head while watching monica’s testimony yesterday… (of course, both have been circulating in my head for months about damn near every stonewalling action undertaken by the criminals that call themselves our country’s leaders…)

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) ... said “it is surprising how often a whiff of obstruction of justice has reared its head in the course of this investigation,” adding that the “standard of impropriety that Kyle Sampson and the attorney general and the Department of Justice, through its public spokesmen, have defined is, in effect — tracks almost exactly the standard for criminal obstruction of justice.”

[...]

Gonzales may also be guilty of lying under oath. His conversation with Goodling took place on either March 14 or 15, a week after Goodling found out that she was going to testify before the House committee. Yet on May 10, Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he had “not gone back and spoken directly with…others who are involved in this process.”

here’s hoping the damn congress will start to move expeditiously and stop their goddam pussyfooting around…

(thanks to think progress...)

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Conyers and Lee: remarks post-Monica

via cnn pipeline...

chairman conyers...

• We need to talk to Karl Rove.

• Possible obstruction of justice and perjury.

• Ms. Goodling was very helpful.

• My Republican colleagues say nothing has been done wrong. PLENTY has gone wrong!

• There's a lot of explaining for Mr. Gonzales and Mr. McNulty to do.

• It's imperative that we get Kyle Sampson before the House Judiciary Committee.

• It's very clear to us that without [Monica Goodling's] testimony, we wouldn't have all these other leads to follow-up. ... I find her credible.

• Stay tuned. This is the "breadcrumb theory" of investigation.
  

congresswoman lee...

• All roads lead to the White House.

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"Nowhere were we taught that the ends justified the means"

"We call on you and the President to relent from this reckless path, and begin to restore respect for the rule of law we all learned to love many years ago."

i posted last evening on the letter to gonzo written by his harvard law school classmates and mentioned the upcoming publication of the letter as a full-page advert in today's wapo... well, here ya go...



meanwhile, over at the national press club...

During an event this morning at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Attorney General Alberto Gonzales launched an unabashed and shameless finger-pointing campaign at outgoing Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, blaming him for the U.S. attorney scandal.

Minimizing his own role, Gonzales said McNulty has “most of the operational authority and decisions” at the Department of Justice.

Despite having delegated the task of putting together the list of fired U.S. attorneys to his chief of staff Kyle Sampson, Gonzales claimed that “the one person I would care about would be the views of the Deputy Attorney General. … At end of the day, my understanding was that Mr. Sampson’s recommendations reflected the consensus view of the senior leadership of the Department — in particular the Deputy Attorney General.”

When asked why two inexperienced staffers — Sampson and Monica Goodling — were given prominent roles in the firing process, Gonzales responded, “Well again you have to remember at the end of the day, the recommendations reflected the views of the Deputy Attorney General. He signed off on the names and he would know better than anyone else.”

and mcnulty isn't even gone yet... couldn't he at least wait until his chair cools off...? is gonzo a total weenie or what...?

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Gonzo continues to deviate, prevaricate and abdicate

but at least we now have solid evidence of the abdication...

The Secret Order (drum roll, please)...



(you can read the story at TPMmuckraker and/or view the complete document here...)

and, don't forget, gonzo is back for another blockbuster encore performance tomorrow... this is from his prepared statement which tells me that nothing whatsoever has changed...

I am aware that decisions involving personnel are some of the most difficult and challenging decisions one can make. United States Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President, but looking back, it is clear to me that I should have done more personally to ensure that the review process was more rigorous, and that each U.S. Attorney was informed of this decision in a more personal and respectful way.

boy, this is sure getting old...

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Why was the former DOJ #2 cut out of attorney firings?

ya gotta ask yourself... why...?

Comey was completely ignorant of Kyle Sampson's list of U.S. attorneys to be removed that Sampson drafted at around the same time. [February 2005]

[...]

Sampson seems to have intentionally ignored all of Comey's recommendations as to who were the weak U.S. attorneys -- and kept Comey, the #2 at the DoJ, ignorant that Sampson and the White House were targeting certain U.S. attorneys with the goal of firing them.

why was it so important that comey be kept out of the loop...? i think we can all hazard a guess - because they didn't want him to know that rove was working with goodling and sampson to remove those who weren't regarded as "loyal bushies" and to replace them with those who were...

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Patrick Leahy as Lieutenant Columbo

from TPMmuckraker...

Tired of waiting for a response, Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) issued a subpoena for any of Karl Rove's emails in the Justice Department's possession that might be relevant to the U.S. attorney firings. That includes emails sent from Rove's White House account (which apparently doesn't get much use) and emails from his account issued by the Republican National Committee.

now that we know that gonzo delegated away his hiring and firing authority, i'm sure leahy knows who exercised it, and it certainly wasn't sampson and goodling... when one ostensibly gives away one's power to relatively inexperienced staff political operatives to select highly experienced professionals, serious questions naturally arise... there seems no doubt that the REAL deciders were in the white house... this whole thing has smelled of karl rove from the get-go and, unless and until karl gets waterboarded into divulging what he knows, leahy's just going to have to continue with his peter falk, columbo routine...

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Now, all Gonzo's "I don't recalls" make sense

emptywheel comments on the bombshell murray waas dropped yesterday...

So, too, does this put Gonzales in an awfully awkward position. All that forgetfulness, all the claims that he was only marginally informed make sense, now. But they make sense for the very good reason that Gonzales was marginally informed only after being very well informed that he was about to become very marginally informed. His lack of recall looks all the more pathetic the more deliberate it appears.

yeah, i was saying the same thing yesterday after reading murray's article...

delegating away your hiring and firing authority, particularly when it's to relatively inexperienced staff political operatives and it involves the selection of highly experienced professionals, is bad enough on its face, but when those inexperienced staff are being used as a cover so that the REAL deciders in the white house are shielded, that's bad, real bad... no wonder leahy had a fit...

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Echoing Atrios on the latest DOJ bombshell

atrios...

Oh My

murray waas...

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales signed a highly confidential order in March 2006 delegating to two of his top aides -- who have since resigned because of their central roles in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys -- extraordinary authority over the hiring and firing of most non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department.

[...]

A senior Justice Department official, who did not know of Gonzales's delegation of authority until contacted by National Journal, said that it posed a serious threat to the integrity of the criminal-justice system because it gave Sampson, Goodling, and the White House control over the hiring of senior officials in the Justice Department's Criminal Division, which oversees all politically sensitive public corruption cases, at the same time that they held authority to hire and fire U.S. attorneys.

[...]

A senior executive branch official familiar with the delegation of authority said in an interview that -- as was the case with the firings of the U.S. attorneys and the selection of their replacements -- the two aides intended to work closely with White House political aides and the White House counsel's office in deciding which senior Justice Department officials to dismiss and whom to appoint to their posts. "It was an attempt to make the department more responsive to the political side of the White House and to do it in such a way that people would not know it was going on," the official said.

profmarcus...

OH MY...!

damn... talk about incriminating...!

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Cooking your own goose for dummies - by Alberto Gonzales

the reviews are in on yesterday's one-man show...

first, in the major media-speak of the wapo...

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales came under withering attack from members of his own party yesterday over the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys, facing the first resignation demand from a Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and doubts from others about his candor and his ability to lead the Justice Department.

[...]

The numerous uncertainties irritated many of the Republican committee members, who criticized Gonzales for bungling the dismissals and their aftermath, and questioned his apparent disconnection from the process.

then, a sample of the less formal (and pretentious) style of a major weblog...

Kyle Sampson, Gonzo's Chief of Staff, is a gentleman who well deserves his name given the apparently superhuman feat he's performed of running the Department of Justice for years in exactly the direction his boss did not want it to go. That being said, Gonzales stands by every decision he never made, even the ones he remembers not making.

[...]

Gonzales' Justice Department is run on the basis of consensus and group responsibility precisely because that minimizes personal risk, and that minimizing personal risk is the top goal of many new people at the Justice Department, whose inexperience in the processes of government is "surpassed only by their evident disdain for it." The buck doesn't stop anywhere.

but, further confirming his reputation as an out-of-touch, totally isolated president, george was "pleased..."

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said yesterday that Bush "was pleased with the attorney general's testimony" and that Gonzales "has the full confidence of the president."

"He again showed that nothing improper occurred," Perino said. "He admitted the matter could have been handled much better, and he apologized for the disruption to the lives of the U.S. attorneys involved, as well as for the lack of clarity in his initial responses."

at the end of yesterday's sad little melodrama, i was left with the same lingering question as david swanson...

How to hold the executive branch to account? The current dilemma seems like a real mystery, something our Constitution just does not provide a solution for. Even if we could get rid of Gonzales, who would replace him? Who, appointed by George Bush and Dick Cheney, would obey and enforce the law? The answer is simple enough: Nobody.

but, the final pronouncement comes from the wapo's dana milbank...

Alberto Gonzales's tenure as attorney general was pronounced dead at 3:02 p.m. yesterday by Tom Coburn, M.D.

[...]

Gonzales had weeks to prepare for yesterday's hearing. But the man who sat at the witness table sounded like the sort of person who forgets where he parked his car.

[...]

Take Gonzales's tally along with that of his former chief of staff, who uttered the phrase "I don't remember" 122 times before the same committee three weeks ago, and the Justice Department might want to consider handing out Ginkgo biloba in the employee cafeteria.

[...]

For much of the very long day, the attorney general responded like a child caught in a lie. He shifted his feet under the table, balled his hands into fists and occasionally pointed at his questioners.

yes, it was truly a pathetic display... i have to ask myself, if a more serious line of questioning had been pursued during gonzo's confirmation hearing, would he be attorney general today...? i think not...

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emptywheel on Schumer and Gonzo: "Oh this is good"

yeah, it's good... REALLY good...

Oh this is good.

Michael Battle, the guy who got to fire a bunch of very professional US Attorneys (and who subsequently quit because, stories said, he regretted the whole thing), told the Judiciary Committees that several of the Gonzales 8 were fired for no reason.

[Battle] told Congress that several of the prosecutors had no performance problems and that a memo on the firings was distributed at a Nov. 27 meeting attended by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, a Democratic senator said yesterday.

And note how this detail is getting to the press? Chuck Schumer is repeating the supposedly confidential briefings ... on the record.

Battle's statements, relayed to reporters yesterday by Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), came as Gonzales prepares for a make-or-break appearance on Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

[snip]

Battle told investigators that he was "not aware of performance problems with respect to several" of the prosecutors when he called to fire them, Schumer said in a conference call with reporters yesterday.

This is a nice touch. Though there was an unspoken understanding no one would mention the USAs who weren't fired, Schumer pressured Kyle Sampson to reveal those names in his statement. And now, rather than getting one of his staffers in trouble for an anonymous leak, Schumer's going to go on the record and reveal the testimony which Abu G has labeled as "confidential." Not in DC, Abu G.

she concludes with this...

I'm getting the feeling that Schumer has been preparing as diligently as Gonzales for the last two weeks.

and it all comes rolling out tomorrow...

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Gonzo: I look forward to working with you IF I still have my fracking job

there is only ONE reason why the wapo would give you a platform to air your pathetic lies, and that is because you are, sadly, STILL attorney general of the united states... and there is only ONE reason why you would seek to take advantage of such a platform, and that is because you are scheduled to testify to congress this coming tuesday, and you want to make your opening statement follow as closely as possible the lies you are writing in the wapo today, which, to your way of thinking, will somehow make them more believable...

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.

and, while you're at it, stop sounding like some red-faced teenager who was caught with an embarrassing stash of hard porn, and is trying to convince his parents that a friend had asked him to keep it for him, and how stupid he was to do something like that, and that he will never do it again, and that, if they want, mom and dad can check his room and his backpack regularly for themselves, just so they can see he has nothing to hide...

While I have never sought to deceive Congress or the American people, I also know that I created confusion with some of my recent statements about my role in this matter. To be clear: I directed my then-deputy chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, to initiate this process; fully knew that it was occurring; and approved the final recommendations. Sampson periodically updated me on the review. As I recall, his updates were brief, relatively few in number and focused primarily on the review process.

During those conversations, to my knowledge, I did not make decisions about who should or should not be asked to resign.

I am committed to explaining my role in this process and will do so Tuesday when I testify before Congress.

I am also committed to correcting any management missteps that occurred during this process. In recent weeks I have met with more than 70 U.S. attorneys around the country to hear their concerns and discuss ways to improve communication and coordination between their offices and the Justice Department.

These discussions have been frank, and good ideas are coming out, including ways to ensure that every U.S. attorney can know whether his or her performance is at the level expected by the president and the attorney general. Additionally, I have asked for recommendations on formal and informal steps that we can take to improve all forms of dialogue between the main Justice Department and U.S. attorneys nationwide.

I am also telling our 93 U.S. attorneys that I look forward to working with them to pursue the great goals of our department in the weeks and months to come.

hey, al... i hope your friendship with kyle sampson is incredibly strong, cuz, if it ain't, he's going to end up hating your ass for the rest of his life... also, gonzo, you might just try grabbing for a little reality and tell those u.s. attorneys that you look forward to working with them IF you still have your fracking job...

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Gonzales' Justice Department

i'm grabbing a lengthy excerpt from a post by emptywheel at the next hurrah who is quoting daniel metcalfe... it's an extremely interesting and, i think, particularly perceptive overview, analysis, and summary of what took place when gonzales took over at justice...

But the process of agency functioning, however, became dramatically different almost immediately after Gonzales arrived. No longer was emphasis placed on accomplishing something with the highest-quality product in a timely fashion; rather, it became a matter of making sure that a "consensus" was achieved, regardless of how long that might take and with little or no concern that quality would suffer in such a "lowest common denominator" environment. And heaven help anyone, career or noncareer employee, if that "consensus" did not include whatever someone in the White House might think about something, be it large, small or medium-sized.

In short, the culture markedly shifted to one in which avoiding any possibility of disagreement anywhere was the overriding concern, as if "consensus" were an end unto itself. Undergirding this, what's more, was the sad fact that so many political appointees in 2005 and 2006 were so obviously thinking not much further than their next (i.e., higher-level) position, in some place where they could "max out" by the end of Bush's second term.

[...]

On one side, you had hard-nosed prosecutors who, for the most part, already had several years' experience under their belts (with little micromanagement from Ashcroft's people) and knew what they were doing already. On the other side, you had political aides who, among other things, had precious little management experience for their positions and were not necessarily adept at playing well with others, even when those others were political appointees like themselves. One need look no further than the extensively disclosed e-mails from Kyle Sampson, Mike Elston [chief of staff to McNulty], Monica Goodling and [Deputy Associate Attorney General] Will Moschella to get a clear picture of this.

Does this mean that at least some of the eight replaced U.S. Attorneys made the list because they failed to get along in a sufficiently deferential fashion with such Main Justice appointees? I'd certainly bet the oldest of my two cars on it, perhaps even the newer one, based upon what I've seen over the years and what I've read in e-mail form more recently. And it surely follows from everything else I've observed that in such a situation, even with the presumed cover of "consensus" decision-making, such appointed aides would scramble mightily, in the most derisive of terms (captured only partially on the disclosed e-mails), to castigate the U.S. Attorney victims of their management inexperience, lest they themselves be held to blame.

And that then, with little sense (of irony or otherwise), they would proceed to publicly tarnish the reputations of several U.S. Attorneys while in the next breath redacting records based on an asserted need to "protect their (i.e., the U.S. Attorneys') privacy." Even putting such callousness and privacy violations aside, and moving swiftly past the image that they "eat their young," it is painfully clear that these political aides got carried away again and again.

this is a very useful insight... scary too...

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Of COURSE, Spitcomb has "our FULL confidence"

he's already a made man in the bushco mafia, one of the real goodfellas...

“Of course President Wolfowitz has our full confidence,” Deputy White House Press Secretary Tony Fratto said yesterday.

if the opportunity arose, i'm sure they would ALSO express FULL confidence in scooter libby, tom delay, jack abramoff, duke cunningham, don rumsfeld, paul bremer, kyle sampson, monica goodling, bernie kerik, and mark foley...

(thanks to think progress...)

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The invasion of the "smiley fascists," or how our government was stolen out from under us

a fascinating post by kstreetprojector over at daily kos, a guy who rubs shoulders with most of the d.c. power structure on a daily basis, where they will be most unguarded - the lunch deli...

Does Mr. Sampson have the skills, knowledge and credibility to understand and evaluate the work of our nations most important prosecutors? No, he does not. But is a fanatic. He is loyal. He does as he is told. In private he is a meticulous, score keeping enforcer of Rove's political machine. Under the Klieg Lights he appears as a lost puppy who couldn't possibly have eaten all the steaks on the BBQ plate.

Does Ms. Goodling have the common good, the constitution and our nations interests at heart? No, she does not. But she is a fanatic. She is loyal. She does as she is told. And while she has spent 7 years vetting every entrant to the DoJ for "Loyalty to the End Times Christian Agendas," she suddenly has $600 dollar and Akin Gump attorneys exercising her 5th amendment rights. I can not imagine how she would react if anyone tried to use the same privilege if she were the inquisitor.

[...]

Clinton's Appointees: Smart. Intellectually Curious. Fair. Strong understanding of their jobs (or willing to admit what they didn't know). Aware they have a role as public servants. Aware they are servants of the people. (Oddly) mostly non-partisan. Willing to drink in public.

Bush's Appointees: Smart. Loyal. Mostly Born-Again or LDS. Most with little or no experience in their jobs, but a fanatic certainty they are their to enforce "the right" decisions which will be delivered by superiors in good time. Ruthlessly-Totally-Unforgiving Partisans, in many cases they will openly express they are certain they have a god-directed duty to 'save' our nation. When you ask them from what, they use several words in an almost interchangeable way: The Terrorists, The Liberals, Social Decay, Moral Decay or The Democrats.

I have come to think of them as the Smiley Fascists. They are young, happy, loyal, ruthless, forcefully Christian, and always smiling. It can be disturbing.

no shit...

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HA...! The White House is begging Congress for a change

well, well, well... whaddaya know...

The White House scrambled Sunday to move up Attorney Alberto Gonzales' planned testimony to Congress on April 17 about his involvement in firing eight federal prosecutors, only to get a cold shoulder from majority Democrats.

now, why do you suppose...?

Until recently, department officials said they wanted to give Congress enough time to go through the more than 3,000 pages of e-mails, memos, calendar pages and other documents detailing the decision to fire the prosecutors.

That changed Friday - the day after Gonzales' former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, testified to the committee - when aides said they would try to get Gonzales to Capitol Hill as soon as possible to explain his side.

[...]

It was Gonzales who chose April 17, said [Senator Patrick] Leahy, D-Vt., and that date will not change now because ``everybody has set their schedule according to that.''

``It's the date that the attorney general originally picked. It's the date the hearing will take place,'' Leahy said.

ahhhhhh... they weren't expecting good ol' kyle, a loyal bushie, to lay gonzo out to dry, and certainly not for almost three weeks...!

and "drying" he is...

Asked directly if he has confidence in Gonzales, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said: ``I can honestly say the president does.''

but as for ME... well, i'd rather not say...

MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...!

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After "young and inept" Mr. Sampson's testimony, things look much worse

that's certainly my take as well, and, while i shouldn't be terribly surprised that it's not in screaming, half-page headlines in every newspaper in the country, i am still nonplussed that the grave implications for gonzo and the white house aren't making more of a bigger splash...

The administration insists that purge was not about partisan politics. But Mr. Sampson’s alternative explanation was not very credible — that the decision about which of these distinguished prosecutors should be fired was left in the hands of someone as young and inept as Mr. Sampson. If this were an aboveboard, professional process, it strains credulity that virtually no documents were produced when decisions were made, and that none of his recommendations to Mr. Gonzales were in writing.

It is no wonder that the White House is trying to stop Congress from questioning Mr. Rove, Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, and other top officials in public, under oath and with a transcript. The more the administration tries to spin the prosecutor purge, the worse it looks.

i am still of the very strong opinion that this disgraceful politicization of the justice department is only the tip of an extremely large iceberg... when we eventually find out the full story of how this administration has gone about its business, we will truly be horror-struck...

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