Don't forget that Karl, Satan's doppelganger, is STILL LURKING ABOUT out there [UPDATE]

and, one of these days, he's going to get what's coming to him...

Senators joined the House on Thursday in approving subpoenas to force President Bush's political adviser and other aides to testify about the firings of federal prosecutors.

While Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is not budging from his insistence that Rove be questioned publicly and under oath, Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter offered President Bush a compromise.

Specter, who took the first step toward brokering a deal a few hours after the Senate Judiciary Committee approved but did not issue subpoenas for Rove and others, suggested that select lawmakers question Karl Rove and other administration officials in public, but not under oath.

White House counsel Fred Fielding promised to convey the offer to Bush, but Leahy doesn't support the deal. "I've had a lot of those unstructured briefings and found that I was given, in many instances, not the whole truth, nothing near the whole truth," said Leahy.

His committee, by voice vote Thursday, gave Leahy authority to issue subpoenas for Rove, former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and her deputy, William Kelley. The House Judiciary Committee chairman, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., was given that same authority a day earlier.

but, while rove is waiting for his day of reckoning, he's definitely going to make sure he's comfy...


Karl Rove's carriage house in Rosemary Beach, Florida.
Only the carriage house is visible from the street;
the house proper lies behind it.

Whatever the next chapter of Rove's life has in store, some of the action will probably take place in Rosemary Beach, Florida, where he bought land in 2002.

According to political journalist Jim Moore, many factors probably influenced the timing of Rove's resignation--including the desire to cash in on lucrative speaker's fees and the prospect of reinventing himself as a political pundit on the national stage.

"Ultimately, though, what probably appeals to Karl the most is being a sort of freelance Dr. Evil," Moore –- a Rove critic -- explained in an email to RAW STORY. "He can do his work now for hire under the guise of any organization that wants to hire him or he can do it for fun and generally avoid the restraint of party or candidate. Have darkness. Will travel."

Rosemary Beach, Florida bills itself as a vacation community, but Rove's home is no beach bungalow. His Dill Lane pad is a 2,578-square-foot cedar and white stucco structure with a stoop, 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, and an outdoor shower. Opposite the main house, separated by a small walled courtyard is a two-story carriage house with a two-car garage on the ground floor.

my fondest wish for years has been that satan will show up in person to collect his marker on rove's soul...

[UPDATE]

and HERE'S the very thing that may do dr. evil in...

In a telephone interview shortly after he walked out of a federal prison in Oakdale, La., Mr. Siegelman said there had been “abuse of power” in his case, and repeatedly cited the influence of Karl Rove, the former White House political director.

“His fingerprints are smeared all over the case,” Mr. Siegelman said, a day after a federal appeals court ordered him released on bond and said there were legitimate questions about his case.

i've said many times, i don't subscribe to schadenfreude... i take no pleasure in seeing anybody take a fall... i do, however, feel strongly about every individual ultimately having to face the consequences of his or her behavior... in rove's case, there are one HELL of a lot of consequences that he has managed to successfully avoid - so far... i want to be around when that changes...

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Will Congress EVER stop the charade?

ofercryinoutloud, leahy, stop pussy-footing around and slap ‘em with inherent contempt… you know goddam good and well they AREN’T going to respond, no matter how much sugar you pour on…

from think progress...

In a letter to White House Counsel Fred Fielding today, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) set a new return date of August 20 for subpoenas served to the executive branch in June. After the White House missed the original due date of July 18, Leahy granted them an extension until Aug. 1, which they also missed.

a think progress commenter observes...

This is like watching a monkey hump a football.

At first it’s funny, then it just gets sad.

now, THERE'S an arresting visual image...

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Gonzo is the firewall for George and Karl and will NEVER be dumped

i was banging on that drum incessantly back in march and april (here, here, here, here, and here)

If Attorney General Alberto Gonzales were miraculously to tell the truth, or if he were to resign or be removed, the secret government of the past six years would be unlocked. So long as a Republican Congress rigorously engaged in enforcing no oversight was smugly complicit through its passive ignorance and abdication of constitutional responsibility, the White House was secure in enacting its theories of the imperial presidency.

it's a theme that can't be stressed enough... here's the graphic i put together back then, and it still applies...

Bush WITH Gonzales

Bush WITHOUT Gonzales

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DOJ advises White House to ignore Congress

i am completely drop-jawed at the arrogance and total lawlessness of the presidential administration that purports to serve as our elected leadership... this is sounding more and more like zimbabwe under robert mugabe rather than the united states of america...

In a broadly worded legal opinion, the Justice Department has concluded that President Bush's former top lawyer, and possibly other senior White House officials, can ignore subpoenas from Congress to testify about the U.S. attorneys affair.

The three-page opinion raises questions about whether the Justice Department would prosecute senior administration officials if Congress voted to hold them in contempt for not cooperating with the investigation into the firing last year of eight top prosecutors.

[...]

Correspondence released by the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday showed that Miers, through her lawyer, had asked White House counsel Fred Fielding whether she had to attend the hearing to personally assert the privilege. After consulting the Justice Department, Fielding wrote back saying that Miers had "absolute immunity from compelled Congressional testimony" and that "the president has directed her not to appear."

The position prompted an angry response from House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., and Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., the chair of the commercial and administrative law subcommittee.

"We are aware of absolutely no court decision that supports the notion that a former White House official has the option of refusing to even appear in response to a Congressional subpoena," Conyers and Sanchez wrote to George Manning, Miers' lawyer. "A refusal to appear ... could subject Ms. Miers to contempt proceedings."

[...]

"The privilege does not entitle you to refuse to appear. The privilege entitles you to refuse to answer questions when you appear if those questions call for privileged information," said Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics professor at New York University law school. "No one can claim the privilege entitles you to ignore the body that subpoenas you."

unbelievable...

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Of COURSE he will...! Denying and defying IS the strategy...!

once again, context-free journalism rises to an art-form under the expert hands of the wapo...

White House Will Deny New Request In Attorneys Probe
Bush to Defy Congress, Sources Say

The White House has decided to defy Congress's latest demand for information regarding the dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys, sources familiar with the decision said yesterday. Such an action would escalate the constitutional struggle and propel it closer to a court showdown.

Senate and House committees have directed President Bush to provide by tomorrow a detailed justification of his executive privilege claims and a full accounting of the documents he is withholding. But White House counsel Fred F. Fielding plans to tell lawmakers that he has already provided the legal basis for the claims and will not provide a log of the documents, the sources said.

The standoff suggests that neither side is prepared to budge in the fight over documents and testimony in the widening U.S. attorney investigation. Officials in both camps said no serious negotiations are taking place to resolve the dispute. Fielding plans to follow up his letter by further asserting executive privilege later this week, the sources said, directing former White House aides Harriet E. Miers and Sara M. Taylor not to testify in response to congressional subpoenas.

i wish to hell everybody would stop pretending the white house is doing anything other than what they said they would do... back in october, even before the november elections (as i've pointed out again and again and again), the white house told us what they were going to do (*see below), and they're doing it, just exactly like they told us they would... they also said that we would remain in iraq forever, and we're doing that too... let's stop dicking around with these stupid games, putting out headlines and sub-heads like it's some goddam surprise, breathlessly announcing "White House to Deny," "Bush to Defy..." how about something like this instead...?

Bush sticks to October Plan

or

White House No-Compromise Strategy Rolls On

why pretend that there's anything the white house or president bush would even CONSIDER doing besides denying and defying...? stick it in our faces - which is exactly where it belongs - that this administration's bottom-line strategy for avoiding oversight and accountability IS denying and defying, and that we've had six and one-half friggin' years of it...

* from time magazine, october 2006...

"In fact, when it comes to deploying its Executive power, which is dear to Bush's understanding of the presidency, the President's team has been planning for what one strategist describes as 'a cataclysmic fight to the death' over the balance between Congress and the White House if confronted with congressional subpoenas it deems inappropriate. The strategist says the Bush team is 'going to assert that power, and they're going to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court on every issue, every time, no compromise, no discussion, no negotiation.'"

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Dan Froomkin supports Larisa's perspective of a trapped White House

i posted yesterday on larisa's perspective that the white claim of executive privilege on attorneygate has left them without a constitutional argument to thwart the subpoenas for information on domestic spying issued wednesday... it appears that froomkin agrees...

"The doctrine of executive privilege exists, at least in part, to protect such communications from compelled disclosure to Congress, especially where, as here, the president's interests in maintaining confidentiality far outweigh Congress's interests in obtaining deliberative White House communications," [White House Counsel Fred Fielding] wrote.

Making that latter argument in response to yesterday's warrantless wiretapping subpoenas will be vastly harder.

There is no way that yesterday's request can be dismissed as a partisan fishing expedition. The subpoenas were approved by members of both parties. They call for basic information about the legal reasoning behind an important government program that appears to violate federal law. They request information that is necessary for the committee to assess the administration's requests to rewrite the applicable laws. And they properly ask for some explanation of why the president blocked an inquiry by the Justice Department's own ethics office.

For six years, the White House has simply waved off pesky questions from the media and Congress. And it is the wiretapping subpoenas, more even than the U.S. attorney subpoenas, that may bring that period to an end.

let's see what happens...

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Let the constitutional crisis/battle over executive privilege games begin

we knew THESE were coming...

re the subpoenas of harriet miers and sara taylor from fred fielding to conyers and leahy...


[...]


re the subpoenas of white house documents related to the firing of the u.s. attorneys from paul clement to george bush...


[...]


ok, congress, the ball is now in your court...

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A "surge" of lawyers to achieve "victory" in the White House

josh at tpm offers this...

Lawyering up. Prez adds nine new lawyers to the White House Counsel's staff.

Late Update: TPM Reader AB checks in ...

Did you note that three of the nine came from the Washington, D.C. firm previously known as Wiley, Rein & Fielding? It is now called Wiley Rein, LLP, since its name member, Fred Fielding, moved to the White House late last year, to help defend BushCo from Congressional oversight and investigation. It appears that Fielding's assessment is that the situation ahead is dire and so he is moving part of his lawyer firm into the White House as reinforcements, a "surge" of lawyers we might call it.Later Update: As many TPM Readers have noted, not a single Regent Univ. Law School alum among the nine. For the people, Regent, for the prez, the Ivy Leagues.

all i ask is that we get this long-delayed constitutional crisis underway... i know everybody in congress is avoiding it like the plague, but, goddam it, it's way, way overdue, and we better get after it rather than sitting around watching our country continue to be dismembered by the most lawless presidential administration in history...

(thanks to mcjoan at daily kos...)

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"You will not be surprised to learn that I take a different view of this matter."

henry waxman...

"On April 16,2007, you appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and discussed the leak of [former covert CIA Agent Valerie Plame] Wilson's identity," Waxman (D-CA) wrote to Andrew Card, the former White House Chief of Staff. "[White House Counsel Fred] Fielding's position appears to be that it is appropriate for you to discuss these matters on The Daily Show, but not before a congressional committee. You will not be surprised to learn that I take a different view of this matter."

ouch... inescapable logic, imho...

Card served as Bush's chief of staff from the President's inauguration until April 2006. In March, Waxman sought "an on-the-record interview regarding the disclosure of Ms. Wilson's covert identity and the White House procedures for handling classified information," with Card.

But the White House Counsel rejected the request because "former senior White House officials such as the Chief of Staff to the President have historically not been available to Congress to testify, or to be interviewed, about their activities in serving the President," according to the Congressman's letter.

why, oh why, oh why-o, can't we put these criminals occupying the white house out on the street - or, better yet, in jail where they belong...?

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Restoring public confidence in the White House - HAHAHAHAHA...!

a "good idea" to cooperate with the senate judiciary committee...? uhhhh, no shit, sherlock...

The White House said Saturday it is agreeing to the Senate Judiciary Committee's request for how to choose someone to help recover some lost e-mails involving official presidential business.

[...]

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Saturday that Fielding called Leahy and Specter to say that allowing the committee input into picking an independent consultant is a good idea.

kind of like gravity... it's not only a good idea, it's THE LAW...! they're skating as fast as they can to avoid criminal charges, there's no doubt about it...

On Thursday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and the committee's top Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, wrote White House counsel Fred Fielding to request that "we jointly agree on a fair and objective process for investigating this matter, including the use of a mutually trusted computer forensic expert."

"Such a process would help to restore the public's confidence in the White House's desire to comply with the Presidential Records Act," the senators said.

restoring "the public's confidence" in ANYTHING the white house has done, is doing or will do is a lost cause... moreover, anyone who still has any confidence in THIS white house is clearly not hitting on all cylinders... the very best the white house can do now, and i'm not sure even that is possible, is to figure out a way to make it to the finish line on 20 january 2009...

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Fred Fielding's "unified offer"

TPMmuckraker translates the latest from the white house on the requested documents...

You can read the letter White House counsel Fred Fielding sent last night to Congress about the U.S. attorneys investigation here.

But here's the shorter version of the "offer":

Dear Congress,

You'll get what we want you to get when we want you to get it, or you'll get nothing.

Best,
Fred Fielding

In the letter, Fielding says that the White House's offer of March 20th stands. It's a great offer, he says. And carping from Democrats and some Republicans like Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) about it fails "to credit fully the extraordinary nature of the disclosure we are prepared to provide."

The offer, remember, was 1) to turn over records of all relevant communications from a White House official to a party outside the White House (but no internal communications are to be turned over) and 2) Karl Rove and other White House officials would meet with Congress privately, but there would be no transcript and no oath. The offer also restricts the range of questioning.

But it gets better. Those RNC-issued email accounts belonging to White House staff are also to be covered under the deal. And Fielding says "it was and remains our intention to collect e-mails and documents from those [RNC-controlled] accounts."

In other words, whatever emails Congress gets, they'll have to get through the White House -- and they won't get anything unless they get it as part of Fielding's "unified offer," his “carefully and thoughtfully considered package of accommodations.”

dear fred,

please take your "unified offer" and carefully but firmly insert it into that special place where the sun does not shine...

respectfully,

profmarcus

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Dear Fred,

we wanted to take a few moments and drop you a short note... it's been a while since we've heard from you... we hope this finds you well...

you'd indicated a while back that you had other documents and third party emails that you would be sending along... since we've caught up with all the other documents you've so thoughtfully provided, this would be a good time to send the rest along, if you can spare some staff to put them all together... oh, and by the way...

"We trust that you will be collecting and producing emails and documents from all email accounts, addresses and domains and that you are not artificially limiting your production to the official White House email and document retention system."

please keep in mind that we are certainly open to discussing the larger matter in greater depth at your earliest convenience...

best regards,

your friends in congress

(thanks to TPMmuckraker...)

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The world series of poker and the jackpot is the U.S. Constitution

i'll see your bet and raise you...

With subpoenas at the ready, House Democrats wrote White House counsel Fred Fielding today to tell him that they "remain committed to seeking a cooperative resolution."

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and subcommittee chairwoman Linda Sanchez (D-CA), who oversaw a vote yesterday to authorize the issuance of subpoenas for Karl Rove and other White House officials, signed the letter.

conyers and sanchez are playing a very tight game, one very careful step at a time... the key is going to be making sure they have the cards and, when their bluff is called, that they have a winning hand... if congress folds on this one, there's not going to be another game...

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Baloney

screw that... leahy ain't gonna buy it...

According to MSNBC just now, White House counsel Fred Fielding offered that Karl Rove and other White House officials be interviewed, but the testimony would be unsworn, behind closed doors, and no transcript would be permitted.

(thanks to TPMmuckraker...)

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Look out! Here come the latest documents!

i'm kind of amazed - and also quite pleased - that, probably at the urging of fred fielding, they're not stonewalling the release of these documents... the rapidity with which it's happening also tells me that they haven't been carefully scrutinized or, perhaps more accurately, sanitized...

The Justice Department is expected to release more than 400 pages of E-mails and documents by close of business today to comply with a demand from Democrats in Congress over the growing crisis regarding the firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year. The crisis has engulfed the department and threatens to cut short Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's tenure.

"You have no idea," said one Justice official, "how bad it is here."

The fear that virtually any piece of communication will have to be turned over has paralyzed department officials' ability to communicate effectively and respond in unison to the crisis, as has the fact that senior Justice officials themselves say they still don't know the entire story about what happened that led to the crisis. So they are afraid that anything they put down on paper could be viewed as lies or obfuscation, when in fact, the story is changing daily as new documents are found and as the Office of Legal Counsel conducts its own internal probe into the matter.

The paralysis will affect the calculations that Gonzales must make this week as to whether he should stay or go. If Gonzales doesn't resign, there's little doubt that he will get few of his initiatives through for the rest of his tenure and that his people will spend months churning out documents at the behest of angry Democrats who will be investigating virtually anything that moves. But this could also give Gonzales an exit strategy, officials say. He could say that while neither he nor his subordinates did anything wrong, he has decided to resign for the greater good of the department and for justice at large.

whatever calculations gonzales is making about staying or going are irrelevant... the only way he will go is at george's behest, and, at this point, sending alberto packing is the LAST thing george wants to do... gonzales is george's firewall, the only thing standing between him and the criminal, unconstitutional goings-on in the department of justice for six-plus years... i think george ought to lay in a big, big stock of depends...he's gonna need 'em...

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Why they're REALLY stalling

they are truly between the proverbial rock and a very, very hard place...

The White House has delayed until next week a decision on whether to release additional documents and to permit top aides to President Bush, including Karl Rove, the chief political adviser, to testify in a Congressional inquiry into the dismissal of federal prosecutors.

Fred F. Fielding, the chief White House counsel, spent Friday evaluating the request and conferred with President Bush about it before Mr. Bush left for Camp David, a White House official said.

Mr. Fielding had initially told Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee that he hoped to have an answer by Friday, but he now expects to report back to the panel after the weekend.

“Given the importance of the issues under consideration, and the presidential principles involved, we need more time to resolve them,” Dana Perino, the deputy White House press secretary, said Friday.

hey... i'd be stalling as well... here's the big picture...

Bush WITH Gonzales

Bush WITHOUT Gonzales

when gonzales gets dumped - and he will - fully one-third of bush's front line disappears... i stick with my prediction of yesterday... the floodgates will open and the crap that will come flooding out will be staggering...

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THIS is the guy who's gonna hafta save George's ass

Fred Fielding, White House counsel

THIS is the guy who stands between george bush and those leading the charge against him, principally john conyers and henry waxman... does he look like a politico or what...?

Mr. Fielding’s real task is ...: to serve as the point man for the White House as it decides the future of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales...

i don't often do predictions, but i'm going out on a limb with this one... i predict mr. fielding is going to be doing a lot more than helping decide the future of alberto gonzales and deciding on whether or not white house staffers will be allowed testify before congress... i think the gonzales mess is going to open the floodgates to a torrent of crap that has been lying out of public sight and growing bigger every day that george bush has been in office... sibel edmonds' case, for instance, and a number of others (jesselyn radack diaries about herself and some of the others on kos)... lukery has been tirelessly working to bring sibel's case to light, and, if what she says is true, the resulting tide of outrage will sweep bush right out of office... let the games begin...

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