Glenn and Bruce Ackerman on the extreme advance of executive power under Obama

overreaching executive power and the virtually complete negation of constitutionally protected liberties lie at the heart of the choices we are being presented in the 2012 presidential election which, upon even cursory reflection, are no choices at all...

glenn ...

[Consider] the years-long screeching over President Bush’s mere eavesdropping and detentions without any judicial review or transparency — he’s assaulting the Constitution and Our Values! – compared with the reaction to Obama’s more extremist assassinations without any judicial review or transparency. Or consider how a high-level aide to John Ashcroft marveled with envy over Obama’s ability to prosecute whistleblowers with such abandon, noting to The New York Times that the Ashcroft DOJ was deterred by the prospect of a political storm that Obama simply does not face:  ”We,” lamented the Ashcroft aide, “would have gotten hammered for it.”

This was the same dynamic that led former Bush OLC official and current Harvard Law Professor Jack Goldsmith to explain quite presciently (and celebratorily) back in May, 2009, that Obama — by leading progressives and Democrats to support his embrace of Bush/Cheney Terrorism and civil liberties policies — was doing more to entrench those once-controversial policies as bipartisan consensus than Bush and Cheney themselves could ever have dreamt of doing:

The new administration has copied most of the Bush program, has expanded some of it, and has narrowed only a bit. Almost all of the Obama changes have been at the level of packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric. . . .

[...]

. . . Obama — as he has proven — can get away with far more aggression and belligerence by all but eliminating the pervasive political conflict that arises when done under a Republican President.

an interview on presidential power conducted by lane greene of the economist with bruce ackerman, sterling professor of law and political science at yale...

so, what are we supposed to do in november when facing that election booth handle...? continue to delude ourselves into thinking that we're participating in government by and for the people...? continue to believe that we actually have a choice when voting for president...? whoever occupies the oval office is and will continue to be the bought-and-paid for property of our global ruling elites who have demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are the ones in charge of the world's economic and governmental systems...

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WOO-HOO...! Dump Yoo...!

this is absolutely the right thing to do... perpetrators of crimes should not be tolerated...

Congress should repeal the provision of the Military Commissions Act that would give Yoo immunity from prosecution for torture committed from September 11, 2001 to December 30, 2005. John Yoo should be disbarred and he should not be retained as a professor of law at one of the country’s premier law schools. John Yoo should be dismissed from Boalt Hall [University of California, Berkeley, Law School] and tried as a war criminal.

now, let's apply the same standard to bush, cheney, rumsfeld, condi, colin, ashcroft, alberto, addington, and the rest of the war criminals...

(thanks to think progress...)

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Torture starts at the top (as if we didn't know)

more "news" we've known all along...

U.S. President George W. Bush's most senior advisers approved "enhanced interrogation techniques" of top al Qaeda suspects by the Central Intelligence Agency, ABC News reported on Wednesday, citing sources it did not name.

ABC reported that the so-called "principals" discussed interrogation details in dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House.

Then national security adviser Condoleezza Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by a select group of senior officials or their deputies, ABC said.

"Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding," ABC reported.

In addition to Rice, the principals at the time included Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft, the report said.

anybody who believed for a single minute that those poor low-level schmucks that took the rap for abu ghraib were acting on their own initiative has been smoking some truly powerful shit...

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The "APPEARANCE" of favoritism...? Surely, you MUST be joking...

damn... i wish somebody would "favor" ME with an 18-month $28-52M contract that i didn't have to bid for...

When the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey needed to find an outside lawyer to monitor a large corporation willing to settle criminal charges out of court last fall, he turned to former Attorney General John Ashcroft, his onetime boss. With no public notice and no bidding, the company awarded Mr. Ashcroft an 18-month contract worth $28 million to $52 million.

That contract, which Justice Department officials in Washington learned about only several weeks ago, has prompted an internal inquiry into the department’s procedures for selecting outside monitors to police settlements with large companies.

[...]

Officials said that while there had been no accusations of wrongdoing on the part of Mr. Christie or Mr. Ashcroft, aides to Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey were concerned about the appearance of favoritism.

ain't no "APPEARANCE" about it... it's the real deal...

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Ashcroft's lobbying firm represents the very companies he's advocating immunity for

how in-your-face outrageous can he be, saying something like this...? hey... wait a minute... how outrageous can the nyt be in PRINTING the goddam thing...? lordy, lordy...

ashcroft, writing in an op-ed in today's nyt...

Longstanding principles of law hold that an American corporation is entitled to rely on assurances of legality from officials responsible for government activities. The public officials in question might be right or wrong about the advisability or legality of what they are doing, but it is their responsibility, not the company’s, to deal with the consequences if they are wrong. To deny immunity under these circumstances would be extraordinarily unfair to any cooperating carriers. By what principle of justice should anyone face potentially ruinous liability for cooperating with intelligence activities that are authorized by the president and whose legality has been reviewed and approved by our most senior legal officials.

but johnny doesn't have anything at stake here... no, sireee...

After leaving government in 2005, Ashcroft began a lobbying and consulting firm. The Ashcroft Group is among several prominent DC firms representing telecommunications giant AT&T, Roll Call reported earlier this year. The Times acknowledges the potential conflict of interest in an editors note, but it obviously was not enough of a concern to keep editors from running Ashcroft's column.

un-friggingly-believable...

Ashcroft does not personally represent a company targeted by about 40 lawsuits that have been filed nationwide.

oh... well, then... never mind...

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AlterNet Drug Reporter

Pot Growers Are New Target in "War on Terror"

Under Bush, terror has become a justification for any and every abuse of power.

When is enough enough? Is there no end to the lunacy? How far are we willing to let this moronic management, we call the Executive Branch, go?

Last time we checked in on the bizarro nexus between cannabis and terrorism, it was none other than actor/director Tommy Chong who was feeling the Bush administration's post-9/11 wrath. In fact, the stoner icon, whose fabled act was concurrently resuscitated for Fox's drugged and confused comedy hit, That 70s Show, was being slapped by John Ashcroft with a nine-month prison bid, a $20,000 fine and over $100,000 in seized assets for selling bongs. The terrorism connection? He was sentenced on Sept. 11, 2003. And if you think that's a specious connection, it's only gotten worse since. In fact, over the last few years, "terrorist" has become an epithet for all seasons.

In 2003, Iraq occupation architect Richard Perle slapped investigative journalist Seymour Hersh with the term, saying, "Look, Sy Hersh is the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist, frankly." As if filing a story about the doomed occupation of a sovereign state in the pages of the New Yorker was the same thing as flying a 747 into the World Trade Center.

In 2004, Secretary of Education Rod Paige called the National Education Association, the country's largest teachers union, "a terrorist organization" because of what Paige defined as the "obstructionist scare tactics" used by its lobbyists. Because we all know it's every educator's dream to buck the systemby blowing themselves up in front of their students.

And just this month, the Bush administration decided to employ the term to legally target the entire Iranian Revolutionary Guard, a sovereign nation's standing army numbering in the hundreds of thousands. When you want a war that badly, you'll pretty much do or say anything to get it.

So how does the Bush administration get away with crying terrorist at every opportunity? Say hello to the Military Commissions Act. Thanks to this 2006 piece of legislation, terrorism has become the basis of American foreign and domestic policy. Yes, the term has become equivalent to everything from ideologically driven violence to petty theft, and can be used to incarcerate, exterminate or character assassinate anything in sight.

It's no wonder then that federal officials are now revisiting their previously failed effort to link terrorism to cannabis, the only real cash cow in the government's so-called War on Drugs. Only difference is, this time, they don't have Tommy Chong as a scapegoat.

Unable or unwilling to solve the nation's crippling meth addiction or its hypocritical dependency on prescribed narcotics like oxycontin, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) recently rang the terrorism alarm to nail pot growers in Redding's Shasta-Trinity National Forest in California. Along the way, ONDCP "czar" John Walters showed off not only the Bush administration's love of twisted terminology but also its subcultural savvy by coining a memorable phrase of his own.

"We have kind of a reefer blindness," Walters explained during a Redding press conference on the ONDCP's Operation Alesia, a cannabis-eradication program coordinated by the California National Guard's Counterdrug Taskforce and the Shasta County Sheriff's Office. Walters followed that clever turn of phrase with the reliable terroristdesignation to describe the armed growers cultivating cannabis in Shasta County. "These people are armed; they're dangerous. [They're] violent criminal terrorists." He even went so far to argue that the "terrorists" growing weed in Shasta County, as the Redding Record Searchlight reported, "wouldn't hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties."

[...]

"Most of the increase can be attributed to the proliferation of foreign Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs), mostly Mexican in origin, which operate in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest and throughout California and much of the United States," Odle explained to me by email. "Frequently using illegal aliens residing outside the United States, or recently smuggled across the [sic] boarder, these Mexican criminal groups establish, maintain and protect an increasing number of clandestine operations."

Yet, predictably, Odle couldn't explain what made them terrorists.

"Some DTOs have been linked by law enforcement and investigations to terrorist organizations and pose a substantial and increasing threat to national security," he added in a subsequent email. "Our primary concern here on the Shasta-Trinity National Forest is the safety of our forest visitors and agency employees and the negative impacts marijuana has on the environment and natural resources, no matter what name is given to the DTOs that are illegally growing marijuana on America's public lands."

[...]

Plus, there are enough holes in the argument to plant your own cannabis seeds. To start with, cannabis may be many things, but it is far from an environmental negative. It has been used for medicinal purposes for thousands of years, can grow in almost any climate, and is a naturally occurring dioecious perennial. (In other words, it's not fossil fuel.)
Further, Odle's claim that safety is Shasta's first concern is understandable, but he offered no examples of violent activity by any of the area growers to legitimize the ONDCP's inflammatory language. Sure, the fact that "some" DTOs have been linked to terrorist organizations is educational, but as with everything the ONDCP touches, specifics are elusive and generalizations are everywhere.

I pressed Odle for further clarification on the terrorism question. But instead of al Qaeda, all I got was more obfuscation. And more Mexicans.

Wait, now, this is MY favorite part.

We're going to need help soon, if the recent white papers on drug abuse from the ONDCP are any indication. Because they've enlisted God for help in beating back the devil weed, as their fact sheet "Marijuana and Kids: Faith" explains: "Religion and religiosity repeatedly correlate with lower teen and adult marijuana and substance use rates and buffer the impact of life stress which can lead to marijuana and substance use. ... Other studies show that teens who don't view faith as important are up to four times more likely to use marijuana."

In other words, smoke up, heretical terrorist! You're not only fueling al Qaeda's mass murder by purchasing weed cultivated by illegal Mexicans in the rural public lands of the world, but you're also turning your back on God in the process. As well as replacing the Bush administration's real world with your selfish virtual reality in which cannabis is a relatively harmless, naturally occurring plant that can chill you out as much as it can fill you out. A massive, multiplayer simulation where pot is a viable medicinal alternative to synthesized painkillers like oxycontin, which ease your agony by killing you off altogether.

According to the Bush administration and its politicized ONDCP, you need to unplug from that moonbat matrix and start praying. Fast. Or else.

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Evidently, the LA Times doesn't care if their stories contradict each other

see previous post...

Clement is expected to follow policies of Gonzales, Ashcroft
The acting attorney general, a longtime Republican, vigorously defends Bush's war on terrorism and limitations on due process.

By Richard A. Serrano, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...!

< cough, snort > HAHAHAHAHA...! < wipes tears out of eyes > HAHAHAHAHAHAHA...!

ari fleischer...

Republicans were very hard on Janet Reno. Democrats were brutal to John Ashcroft and now Judge Gonzales. What’s happening is Congress is really politicizing the Justice Department, unfairly so and dangerously so, because there are so many important law important functions that go on there. It’s regrettable, both parties have done it.

what a very rovian thing to say... karl may be gone but his pupils have learned well...

(thanks to think progress...)

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The Vice President and his counsel can seek info on ongoing DOJ investigations

remember when senator sheldon whitehouse introduced this, the difference between white house/department of justice communication protocol under clinton vs. george bush, back at the senate judiciary committee hearing with gonzo on april 19...?



well, marcy - emptywheel - wheeler, posting in the next hurrah, highlights an even more disturbing part of gonzo's testimony today...

The exchange started with Whitehouse getting Gonzales to agree that the most likely avenue of improper influence in ongoing investigations was the White House...

[...]

Then he goes on to review a memo that Gonzales himself signed, actually extending the structure Ashcroft set in place. And while Ashcroft's memo made several attempts to tamp down this structure, in key ways he opened it up, explicitly for the Fourth Branch. Whitehouse describes how the memo describes that the lines of communication open to the White House will "apply in parallel fashion in communications with the OVP." And then he points specifically to a paragraph at the end of the memo reiterating the communications open to OVP. Gonzales, typically, claims to have no idea how those items got into a memo he signed personally.

[...]

Lovely. Cheney--whose own Chief of Staff was indicted and convicted for impeding an ongoing investigation--now has usurped access to ongoing investigations, for himself, his Chief of Staff, and his Counsel, courtesy of AGAG. David Addington, the architect of the Unitary Executive, now gets to know what DOJ is doing with ongoing investigations.

oh. my. freakin'. god... i didn't think it could get worse, but, as always, i am proven wrong - usually on a daily basis...

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So, we have more spying programs after all... We are SO-O-O-O-OO surprised...!

there's no news whatsoever in this story... not only do we have more spying programs being conducted by our government than they have previously admitted to, but alberto gonzales has been lying about their existence... DAMN...! lies, lies, and damn lies... nothing new to report here...

In his testimony today before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was asked by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) to address inaccuracies in his 2006 testimony in relation to the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.

[...]

The disagreement that occurred was about other intelligence activities and the reason for the visit to the hospital was about other intelligence activities. It was not about the terrorist surveillance program that the president announced to the American people.

Today’s testimony contradicts what Gonzales had said previously. In June, Gonzales claimed that both he and Comey were referring to the same domestic spying program. “Mr. Comey’s testimony related to a highly classified program which the president confirmed to the American people sometime ago,” he said.

If Gonzales’ testimony is accurate today, then he is confirming the existence of a new administration spying program.

< yawn > just one more instance of our elected government lying through its teeth to its citizens...

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More from the Constitution Subcommittee hearings on domestic spying

from think progress and the nyt...

Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC):
I’m not asking you to make anything public. I’m asking you, does that mean that the former attorney general had some reservations about — legal reservations about some aspects of the program, Mr. Bradbury?

Principal deputy assistant attorney general and the head of the Office of Legal Counsel Steven Bradbury:
Well, all I’ll say is what the attorney general has said, which is that disagreements arose, disagreements were addressed and resolved; however, those disagreements did not — were not about the particular activities that the president has publicly described, that we have termed the Terrorist Surveillance Program.

Bradbury’s testimony contradicts what Alberto Gonzales said just last week. Gonzales claimed that former Deputy Attorney General James Comey’s testimony about Ashcroft’s reservations related to the “program which the president confirmed to the American people sometime ago.”

So, if Gonzales is telling the truth, Bradbury misled Congress under oath. If Bradbury is telling the truth, it means that Gonzales has again lied about the controversy surrounding the administration’s spying efforts. Moreover, if Bradbury is correct that Ashcroft’s disagreements were not about the NSA warrantless wiretapping program, that must mean other spying programs exist.

any way you slice it, it's lies, lies, and more lies... speaking for myself, i have no doubt whatsoever that intensive, in-depth domestic surveillance is being conducted and has been for some time, extending back prior to the clinton administration...

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Dear John Ashcroft, the pleasure of your company is requested

standard business attire... rsvp to john rockefeller or silvestre reyes...

The Senate and House Intelligence Committees are asking former attorney general John Ashcroft to testify about a March 2004 hospital-room confrontation during which he refused to sign off on a continuation of President Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping program, according to congressional and administration sources.

The sources, who asked not to identified talking about sensitive matters, said the Senate Intelligence Committee has tentatively scheduled a closed-door hearing for later this month. The panel plans to question Ashcroft, his former chief of staff David Ayres and former deputy attorney general James Comey about a heated dispute with the White House that roiled the Justice Department three years ago. The House committee is also planning a separate closed-door hearing with Ashcroft, according to a spokeswoman for Ashcroft.

i find this encouraging for two reasons... one, i wondered when somebody was going to go after ashcroft... it seems he's got a lot to offer none of which he's shared... two, i'm glad to see the house and senate intelligence committees getting really cranked up in the oversight department... i definitely don't think silvestre reyes is the sharpest tack in the box, but maybe between him and rockefeller, they can put together a squeeze play... and, then again, maybe not... it does kinda sound like it might happen, tho'... if ashcroft and half of his gang were ready to resign as comey stated, john's got a lot o'splainin' to do...

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Ashcroft, OTOH, still only crickets chirping

John Ashcroft's split personality

on the one hand...

good ashcroft...

In addition to rejecting to the most expansive version of the warrantless eavesdropping program, the officials said, Ashcroft also opposed holding detainees indefinitely at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without some form of due process. He fought to guarantee some rights for those to be tried by newly created military commissions. And he insisted that Zacarias Moussaoui, accused of conspiring with the Sept. 11 hijackers, be prosecuted in a civilian court.

but on the other...

bad ashcroft...

He championed a broad expansion of government power to investigate possible terrorist cells through the USA Patriot Act, authorized the detention of hundreds without charges in the days after Sept. 11, pushed immigration agents to fully use their power to deport foreigners, secured new authority to peer into private records even in libraries, and oversaw legal interpretations that opened the door to harsh interrogation techniques that critics called torture.

good ashcroft...

"John was completely devoted to the Department of Justice and completely devoted to the Constitution," [former deputy attorney general Larry D. Thompson] said.

some of both...

Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. "Clearly, we had an attorney general at that point who at least had strong, independent views. . . . I just wish Ashcroft had exhibited similar independence on the issue of torture."

as my dear departed grandma used to say, "if wishes were horses, beggars would ride..." i wish for a lot of things, so, while we're on the subject of wishes, yes, i wish ashcroft had been a hell of a lot more assertive in putting the "bad" ashcroft on ice, had resisted the intrusive provisions of the patriot act, had stood foursquare against torture, had squelched extraordinary rendition, and spoken up about a whole lot of other things...

my biggest wish, however, is that he would have stepped forward after the disgraceful and illegal hospital incident and shared with those who needed to know, or, even better yet, the american people, just how far beyond the law our president and his hired thugs are willing to go... so, amid all the talk of ashcroft being "an american hero..."

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) praised his "fidelity to the rule of law." The Wonkette Web site posted the headline: "Ashcroft Takes Heroic Stand." Under a similar headline, "John Ashcroft, American Hero," Andrew Sullivan expressed astonishment on his Atlantic magazine blog that "John Ashcroft was way too moderate for these people. John Ashcroft."

i must demur... in spite of the fact that he took a principled stand, he still falls into the ranks of those who could have spoken up but didn't, and into the even worse category of those who still haven't spoken up... like every other government official, john ashcroft took an oath to defend the united states constitution... it still needs defending, perhaps never more so than now, and all we hear from john ashcroft's general direction is crickets chirping...

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Oh, please, please, WATCH this, while I wipe tears of laughter from my eyes

oh. my.



anything i could add would be entirely superfluous...

(thanks SO much to think progress...)

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Day #3 that the WaPo smells the coffee, kinda sorta

i do believe a new term has entered the lexicon...

WEDNESDAY NIGHT AMBUSH

day 1, the wapo is simply SHOCKED about comey's testimony...

day 2, they're calling láffaire gonzo a cover-up...

and, now, day 3, they are excoriating bush for trying to hide behind "the national security curtain"...

It doesn't much matter whether President Bush was the one who phoned Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's hospital room before the Wednesday Night Ambush in 2004. It matters enormously, however, whether the president was willing to have his White House aides try to strong-arm the gravely ill attorney general into overruling the Justice Department's legal views. It matters enormously whether the president, once that mission failed, was willing nonetheless to proceed with a program whose legality had been called into question by the Justice Department. That is why Mr. Bush's response to questions about the program yesterday was so inadequate.

there's one statement in the op-ed, however, that is profoundly disturbing...

Under the Constitution, the president has the final authority in the executive branch to say what the law is. But as a matter of presidential practice, this is breathtaking.

is it just me, or is that an endorsement of the bogus unitary executive, signing statement scam, wartime powers of the commander in chief under article II of the constitution bullshit that bush has been slinging at us for years...?

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Bush: "I'm not going to talk about it"

click over to think progress and watch the president of the united states verbally flip off the media and the american people...

During a press conference today, President Bush was confronted about recent accusations made by former Deputy Attorney General James Comey regarding the White House’s shocking efforts to seek legal sanction for its warrantless wiretapping program.

[...]

NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell pressed Bush on this point. “Sir, did you send your then Chief of Staff and White House Counsel to the bedside of John Ashcroft while he was ill to get him to approve that program,” she asked, “and do you believe that kind of conduct from White House officials is appropriate?”

Bush twice dodged the question entirely. “Kelly, there’s a lot of speculation about what happened and what didn’t happen. I’m not going to talk about it.” He added, “I’m not going to move the issue forward by talking about” it.

our president has absolutely no respect for the truth... he doesn't speak it himself and he refuses to respond to others' attempts to discover it... george bush and his criminal administration must be removed...

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The WaPo on Comey - smelling the coffee?

they're SHOCKED, simply SHOCKED...!

The dramatic details should not obscure the bottom line: the administration's alarming willingness, championed by, among others, Vice President Cheney and his counsel, David Addington, to ignore its own lawyers. Remember, this was a Justice Department that had embraced an expansive view of the president's inherent constitutional powers, allowing the administration to dispense with following the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Justice's conclusions are supposed to be the final word in the executive branch about what is lawful or not, and the administration has emphasized since the warrantless wiretapping story broke that it was being done under the department's supervision.

Now, it emerges, they were willing to override Justice if need be. That Mr. Gonzales is now in charge of the department he tried to steamroll may be most disturbing of all.

guess what... there's a LOT more where this came from, and i only hope it all surfaces quickly... we can't afford to wait...

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Comey speaks

go read it for yourself at TPMmuckraker... it's very scary stuff... you can only imagine what's taken place that we don't yet know about... you can only imagine what's going on right NOW that we don't know about... it's easy to see why george was so eager to put gonzo in the ag seat and why he's so loath to let him go...

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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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Looks like Fitz was nearly a casualty of the purge

can you imagine the holy uproar if fitz had been dismissed...? as it is, this is going to reverberate loudly in the investigation - as it should...

U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald was ranked among prosecutors who had "not distinguished themselves" on a Justice Department chart sent to the White House in March 2005, when he was in the midst of leading the CIA leak investigation that resulted in the perjury conviction of a vice presidential aide, administration officials said yesterday.

The ranking placed Fitzgerald below "strong U.S. Attorneys . . . who exhibited loyalty" to the administration but above "weak U.S. Attorneys who . . . chafed against Administration initiatives, etc.," according to Justice documents.

and check this out, particularly the statement from his former boss...

Mary Jo White, who supervised Fitzgerald when she served as the U.S. attorney in Manhattan and who has criticized the firings, said ranking him as a middling prosecutor "lacks total credibility across the board."

"He is probably the best prosecutor in the nation -- certainly one of them," said White, who worked in the Clinton and Bush administrations. "It casts total doubt on the whole process. It's kind of the icing on the cake."

Fitzgerald has been widely recognized for his pursuit of criminal cases against al-Qaeda's terrorist network before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and he drew up the official U.S. indictment against Osama bin Laden. He was named as special counsel in the CIA leak case in December 2003 by then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who had recused himself.

Fitzgerald also won the Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service in 2002 under Ashcroft.

Justice spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said yesterday that "Pat Fitzgerald has a distinguished record as one of the most experienced and well-respected prosecutors at the Justice Department. His track record speaks for itself."

but herein lies the rub, as we certainly could have guessed...

But Fitzgerald also came under sharp criticism from many Republicans and press advocates for his aggressive pursuit of the Libby case.

let's see where this goes...

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