"SOON BUSH'S ADMINISTRATION WILL HAVE A LINE UP EVERY MONDAY MORNING FOR GUYS READY TO FALL ON THEIR SWORDS...." Leonard

3.31.2007 Federal judge blocks enforcement of US national forest regulation By Joe Shaulis

Hamilton found that the 2005 regulation [text; summary], which gave national forest managers more discretion in allowing logging, mining and other activities, had been adopted without adequate procedural safeguards, environmental reviews and public comment.

3.30.2007 House Committee requests deposition of former Rove assistant in connection with Abramoff, Raw Story

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee today requested that former Special Assistant to the President, Susan Ralston, appear at a deposition on Apr. 5th, as part of the committee's ongoing investigation into the connection between the White House and lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

3.30.2007 Story Time in the Senate NYT Editorial

The senators questioning Mr. Sampson pointed to a troubling pattern: many of the fired prosecutors were investigating high-ranking Republicans. He was asked if he was aware that the fired United States attorney in Nevada was investigating a Republican governor, that the fired prosecutor in Arkansas was investigating the Republican governor of Missouri, or that the prosecutor in Arizona was investigating two Republican members of Congress.

Mr. Sampson’s claim that he had only casual knowledge of these highly sensitive investigations was implausible, unless we are to believe that Mr. Gonzales runs a department in which the chief of staff is merely a political hack who has no hand in its substantive work. He added to the suspicions that partisan politics were involved when he made the alarming admission that in the middle of the Scooter Libby investigation, he suggested firing Patrick Fitzgerald, the United States attorney in Chicago who was the special prosecutor in the case.

At the time of her ouster, Lam had initiated an investigation of corruption allegations against California Representative Jerry Lewis, who ran in the same crowd as Cunningham and doled out millions of dollars in contracts from his perch on the Appropriations Committee.

Another reason for this blatant obstruction of justice in the Wilkes-Foggo case might be related to the activities of Wilkes' company, the Shirlington Limousine and Transportation Service of Virginia. This limousine service was providing more than just transportation for Dusty, Duke, and their buddies. It has been alleged that Wilkes' company provided high-priced prostitutes to satisfy the carnal pleasures of Cunningham and his well-connected defense and CIA-contractor pals on the taxpayer's dime. The boys at Justice might have fired Lam, not only to protect their colleagues' kickbacks, but to block the exposure of a full-throttle sex scandal.

See also: Red Lights on Capitol Hill? By Ken Silverstein, Harper's, April 2006

And: Follow-up 2: Red Lights on Capitol Hill By Ken Silverstein

A few days ago I wondered aloud exactly how Shirlington Limousine of Arlington, Virginia, owned by Christopher Baker—a man with a lengthy history of illegal activity—”got millions of dollars in federal contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and if those contracts had anything to do with Shirlington’s relationship with defense contractor and accused Duke Cunningham-briber Brent Wilkes. The latter, readers might recall, allegedly used Baker’s limo service to transport congressmen, CIA officials, and perhaps prostitutes to his Washington parties.

Most companies owned by a man with a 62-page rap sheet aren’t nearly so lucky in winning taxpayer dollars.

In a letter to White House political affairs director Karl Rove, the committee chairman, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), asked about the Jan. 26 videoconference by Rove deputy J. Scott Jennings, which was directed to the chief of the GSA and as many as 40 agency officials stationed around the country.

Jennings's 28-page presentation included 2006 election results and listed the names of Democratic candidates considered beatable and Republican lawmakers thought to need help. At a hearing Wednesday about the GSA, Waxman said the presentation and follow-up remarks allegedly made by agency chief Lurita Alexis Doan may have violated the Hatch Act, a law that restricts federal agencies and employees from using their positions for political purposes.

See also: US News index of its coverage regarding fired attorneys: (Here)

3.28.2007 Abramoff Emails Raise New Questions in Attorney Firings

"In one case, Mr. Abramoff sent Ms. Ralston an email on her RNC account asking her to 'pass on to Karl that Interior is about to approve a gaming compact ... for a tribe which is an anathema to all our supporters,'" and requesting "some quiet message from WH that this is absurd," Waxman wrote, quoting from the Ralston and Abramoff email exchange. "This email was forwarded to Jennifer Farley in the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, who apparently then warned one of Abramoff's associates about the dangers of leaving a record of their communications. According to an email Mr. Abramoff received from his associate Kevin Ring: 'Your email to Susan was forwarded to Ruben Barrales and on to Jen Farley, who read it to me last night. I don't know what to think about this, but she said it is better not to put this stuff in writing in their email system because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc.... Just letting you know what she said.'"
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Abramoff responded to that exchange, according to Waxman, writing in an email: "Dammit. It was sent to Susan on her RNC pager and was not supposed to go into the WH system."
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But the revelation in Waxman's letter that Abramoff communicated with Susan Ralston - Rove's former assistant - via an RNC email account suggests that the DOJ inspector general may not have obtained email correspondence between Abramoff and the White House because RNC emails can be destroyed, whereas emails sent using a White House account are automatically archived, in conjunction with the Presidential Records Act.

Bob Barr, who as a Georgia congressman authored a successful amendment that blocked D.C. from implementing a medical marijuana initiative, has switched sides and become a lobbyist for the Marijuana Policy Project.
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“I, over the years, have taken a very strong stand on drug issues, but in light of the tremendous growth of government power since 9/11, it has forced me and other conservatives to go back and take a renewed look at how big and powerful we want the government to be in people’s lives,” Barr said.

The Feb. 23 letter, which was written by Sampson but signed by Hertling, emphatically stated that "the department is not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Mr. Griffin." It also said that "the Department of Justice is not aware of anyone lobbying, either inside or outside of the administration, for Mr. Griffin's appointment."

Those assertions are contradicted by e-mails from Sampson to White House aide Christopher G. Oprison on Dec. 19, 2006, about a strategy to deal with senators' opposition to Griffin's appointment. In the e-mail, Sampson says there is a risk that senators might balk and repeal the attorney general's newly won broader authority to appoint U.S. attorneys.

"I'm not 100 percent sure that Tim was the guy on which to test drive this authority, but know that getting him appointed was important to Harriet, Karl, etc.," Sampson wrote. Former White House counsel Harriet Miers was among the first people to suggest Griffin as a replacement for Cummins.

On January 13, the San Diego Union-Tribune quoted Dan Dzwilewski, head of FBI's San Diego office, as saying Lam was crucial to ongoing investigations. "I guarantee politics is involved," he was quoted saying.

Feinstein said her chief counsel had called the FBI's San Diego office to verify the accuracy of the story. She said the office confirmed it was true "but they also said they'd been warned to say no more."
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Schumer asked Mueller if he was aware of any FBI voter-fraud probe that should have resulted in an indictment but did not.

"Not to my knowledge," the FBI director replied.

The Times article, by Andrew Revkin and Matthew Wald, noted that Mr. Cooney said his past work opposing restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions on behalf of the oil industry had “no bearing” on his actions at the White House. “When I came to the White House,” he testified, “my sole loyalties were to the president and his administration.” (How about loyalty to scientific method?)
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Let’s see, of all the gin joints. Of all the people the Bush team would let edit its climate reports, we have a guy who first worked for the oil lobby denying climate change, with no science background, then went back to work for Exxon. Does it get any more intellectually corrupt than that? Is there something lower that I’m missing?

As the liaison between the White House and the Justice Department, Ms. Goodling seems to have been squarely in the middle of what appears to have been improper directions from the White House to politicize the hiring and firing of United States attorneys. Mr. Gonzales has insisted the eight prosecutors were let go for poor performance, and that the dismissals are an “overblown personnel matter.” But Ms. Goodling’s decision to exercise her Fifth Amendment rights suggests that she, at least, believes crimes may have been committed.

4.23.2006 Senate Majority Project

Since the phone jamming scandal surfaced in 2003, the Republican National Committee and the New Hampshire Republican State Committee have spent nearly $6 million on the firms involved in the case

Josh Marshall "I guess just out of the goodness of their hearts."

4.11.2006 LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer

Phone-Jamming Records Point to White House

... Key figures in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in 2002 had regular contact with the White House and Republican Party as the plan was unfolding, phone records introduced in criminal court show.

Monica Goodling, a Justice Department official involved in the firings of federal prosecutors, will refuse to answer questions at upcoming Senate hearings, citing Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination, her lawyer said Monday.

It’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.

3.26.2007 Campaign Candor By BOB HERBERT

A closer look at John Edwards’s views on health care, poverty and other issues would require, of course, a closer look at the positions of the other candidates. What could be better? What’s the sense of having a presidential campaign that takes up the better part of two years if the bulk of that time is spent on foolishness?

3.26.2007 Scarecrow takes down David Brooks and the DOJ

3.25.2007 Glenn Greenwald:

If, as Tony Snow argued this week, Congress has no power to exercise oversight over the White House, and if (as the administration has repeatedly argued) courts are barred from scrutinizing their behavior on the ground that "state secrets" will be jeopardized, what oversight exists with regard to the President's conduct? The answer of the Bush movement has been: "none," and as a country, we more or less have tolerated that. And now that some minimal oversight is finally starting to emerge -- as a result of the vote of a citizenry which obviously (and finally) has had enough -- the Beltway elite are protesting that it's all so unpleasant and is a "distraction" from the nation's business.
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UPDATE II: If anyone ever asks you to explain the fundamental sickness of our national media and the central role they have played in damaging our country so severely, and they tell you they only have three minutes to listen, you can show them this video, from The Chris Matthews Show (the Sunday edition), where Chris and his friends like Norah and Gloria discuss the U.S. attorney scandal.

Everything is a game. Corruption and deceit at the highest levels of our government are just funny Beltway shenanigans. It's all just fodder to giggle over by our Washington media geniuses. The White House caused U.S. attorneys to be prosecuted in order to impede investigations of their political allies or to punish those who refused to launch frivolous prosecutions of political enemies, and then lied about everything? With such contrived, shallow "sophistication" and a poisoinously jaded, cynical, all-knowing tone, that's all just material used to mock those who actually find such behavior objectionable.

Mr. Bush and his inner circle are clearly afraid that if Guantánamo detainees are tried under the actual rule of law, many of the cases will collapse because they are based on illegal detention, torture and abuse ­ or that American officials could someday be held criminally liable for their mistreatment of detainees.

TIDE has also created concerns about secrecy, errors and privacy. The list marks the first time foreigners and U.S. citizens are combined in an intelligence database. The bar for inclusion is low, and once someone is on the list, it is virtually impossible to get off it. At any stage, the process can lead to "horror stories" of mixed-up names and unconfirmed information, Travers acknowledged.
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"How many are on the lists, how are they compiled, how is the information used, how do they verify it?" asked Lillie Coney, associate director of the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center. Such information is classified, and individuals barred from traveling are not told why.
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TIDE is a vacuum cleaner for both proven and unproven information, and its managers disclaim responsibility for how other agencies use the data.

So far his truculence has been largely attributed to his slavish loyalty to his White House supplicants, his ideological belief in unilateral executive-branch power and, as always, his need to shield the Machiavellian machinations of Karl Rove (who installed a protégé in place of one of the fired attorneys).
Dictionary.com

To see what Mr. Rove might be trying to cover up, look instead at what Ms. Lam was up to in May, just as the Justice Department e-mails indicate she was being earmarked for removal. Building on the Cunningham case, she was closing in on Dusty Foggo, the C.I.A.’s No. 3 official and the director of its daily operations. Mr. Foggo had been installed in this high intelligence position by Mr. Bush’s handpicked successor to George Tenet as C.I.A. director, Porter Goss.

Ms. Lam’s pursuit sped Mr. Foggo’s abrupt resignation; Mr. Goss was out too after serving less than two years. Nine months later ­ just as Ms. Lam stepped down from her job in February ­ Mr. Foggo and a defense contractor who raised more than $100,000 for the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign were indicted by a grand jury on 11 counts of conspiracy and money laundering in what The Washington Post called “one of the first criminal cases to reach into the C.I.A.’s clandestine operations in Europe and the Middle East.” Because the allegations include the compromising of classified information that remains classified, we don’t know the full extent of the damage to an agency and a nation at war.

Justice Department officials first said the White House approved the ouster plan only after it was initiated by Justice, but e-mail messages have shown that officials at the White House initiated the effort, shortly after the 2004 elections.
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“Karl Rove stopped by to ask you (roughly quoting) ‘how we planned to proceed regarding U.S. Attorneys, whether we were going to allow all to stay, request resignations from all and accept only some of them, or selectively replace them, etc.,’ ” said a January 2005 e-mail message from a White House official that was forwarded to Mr. Sampson.

3.24.2007 Gonsales approved firings

3.22.2007 Prosecutor Says Bush Appointees Interfered With Tobacco Case By Carol D. Leonnig, The Washington Post

"Political interference is happening at Justice across the department," she said. "When decisions are made now in the Bush attorney general's office, politics is the primary consideration.... The rule of law goes out the window."
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News reports on the strategy changes at the time caused an uproar in Congress and sparked an inquiry by the Justice Department. Government witnesses said they had been asked to change testimony, and one expert withdrew from the case. Government lawyers also announced that they were scaling back a proposed penalty against the industry from $130 billion to $10 billion.
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The most stressful moment, Eubanks said, came when the three appointees ordered her to read word for word a closing argument they had rewritten. The statement explained the validity of seeking a $10 billion penalty.

"I couldn't even look at the judge," she said.

This time, it is my belief that Bush — unlike Reagan before him — will not blink. He will not let Fielding strike a deal, as Fielding did for Reagan. Rather, Bush feels that he has his manhood on the line. He knows what his conservative constituency wants: a strong president who protects his prerogatives. He believes in the unitary executive theory of protecting those prerogatives, and of strengthening the presidency by defying Congress.

In short, all those who have wanted to see Karl Rove in jail may get their wish, for he will not cave in, either — and may well be prosecuted for contempt, as Gorsuch was not. Bush’s greatest problem here, however, is Harriett Miers. It is dubious he can exert any privilege over a former White House Counsel; I doubt she is ready to go to prison for him; and all who know her say if she is under oath, she will not lie. That could be a problem.

The House bill, whose chief sponsor is Representative Patrick Kennedy, Democrat of Rhode Island and the senator’s son, looks stronger in some respects. It would require that any plan that covered mental health provide coverage for, at a minimum, the same wide range of mental and addiction disorders that are currently covered by the health plan with the largest enrollment of federal employees.

Last April, while the Justice Department and the White House were planning the firings, Rove gave a speech in Washington to the Republican National Lawyers Association. He ticked off 11 states that he said could be pivotal in the 2008 elections. Bush has appointed new U.S. attorneys in nine of them since 2005: Florida, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Arkansas, Michigan, Nevada and New Mexico. U.S. attorneys in the latter four were among those fired.
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In testimony to a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing this week, Rich said that 20 of the 35 attorneys in the voting rights section have been transferred to other jobs or have left their jobs since April 2005 and a staff of 26 civil rights analysts who reviewed state laws for discrimination has been slashed to 10.

Meanwhile, about halfway through the 80-page supplemental bill is a section that demands that the Iraqi government enact “a broadly accepted hydro-carbon law that equitably shares oil revenues among all Iraqis” by this fall. That sounds perfectly fine, but the law in question turns out to be one that the Bush Administration and American energy firms have been pushing for years and that, as Antonia Juhasz of Oil Change International explained last week in a New York Times op-ed, would allow international companies to take control of much of Iraq's oil “for a generation or more,”

Jane’s and Christy’s posts yesterday quoted from the WaPo article in which DoJ political operatives forced the assistant US Attorney in the anti-tobacco suits to scale back the prosecution, limit expert testimony, reduce damage requests and read a closing argument the political operatives wrote. That interference confirms Paul Krugman’s warning (Times Select): the scandal isn’t just the eight who were forced out but also the 85 who are still there and keeping quiet, or others who resigned earlier in disgust, but never spoke out. The money quote came from the 22-year former US prosecutor, Sharon Eubanks: (Here)

“Let’s see what happens to Gonzales,” that official said, referring to speculation that Mr. Gonzales will be forced to step down, or at least is significantly weakened, because of the political uproar over the dismissal of United States attorneys. “I suspect this one isn’t over yet.”

When you look at the prosecutors who were fired by the Bush administration, you see some who were fired for proper political reasons and some who were fired for improper ones. Carol Lam seems to have been properly let go because she did not share the president’s priorities on illegal immigration cases. David Iglesias seems to have been improperly let go because he offended some members of the president’s party.

The White House notes that making misrepresentations to Congress is illegal, even if no oath is taken. But that seems to be where the lack of a transcript comes in. It would be hard to prove what Mr. Rove and others said if no official record existed.

3.21.2007 The 5 Words Bush Wants Americans to Repeat By Dr. Jeffrey Feldman (Frameshop)

In this case, President Bush used 5 keywords, yesterday, that were strategically repeated with the goal of shifting the debate over the firing of Federal Attorneys by Alberto Gonzales away from talk of willful deceit of Congress and loyalty over law, to a more benign discussion of "resignations" and "incomplete" "explanations." Moreover, President Bush tried to force the word "fishing" into the debate to convince the public that Congress' attempt to find the truth about what happened is an attempt to restore honesty and integrity to government, but simply a partisan attack.

That's some game, eh? Enforcement of the contempt power falls to the U.S. Attorneys -- the political strong-arming and contamination of which brought us to this crisis in the first place. Heck, you'd almost think they... planned it. He quotes KAREN TUMULTY, Mike Allen who said:

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."

One gets the impression that Team Clinton values its survival more than most people want justice and thus will delay without qualm. But as the clock ticks, the public's faith in Mr. Clinton will ebb away for a simple reason: Most of us want no part of a president who is cynical enough to use the majesty of his office to evade the one thing he is sworn to uphold -- the rule of law.

"From the attorney general on down, you should be ashamed of yourself," said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. "We stretched to try to give you the tools necessary to make America safe, and it is very, very clear that you've abused that trust."
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Fine found more than 700 cases in which FBI agents obtained telephone records through "exigent letters" which asserted that grand jury subpoenas had been requested for the data, when in fact such subpoenas never been sought.

Philip Cooney, former chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, acknowledged at a House hearing that some of the changes he made were "to align these communications with the administration's stated policy" on climate change.

The extent of Cooney's editing of government climate reports first surfaced in 2005. Shortly thereafter, Cooney, a former oil industry lobbyist, left the White House to work at Exxon Mobil Corp.

3.19.2007 Democrats turn up heat on firing of U.S. attorney They allege Carol Lam was ousted in San Diego because she was investigating Republican politicians in Southern California. By Richard A. Serrano, LATimes Staff Writer

3.20.2007 It Wasn't Just a Bad Idea. It May Have Been Against the Law. By ADAM COHEN

... if this were a law school issue spotter, any student who could not identify any laws that may have been broken would get an "F."

But Republicans shouldn’t cry for Ronald Reagan; the truth is, he never left them. There’s no need to reclaim the Reagan legacy: Mr. Bush is what Mr. Reagan would have been given the opportunity.
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Why is there such a strong family resemblance between the Reagan years and recent events? Mr. Reagan’s administration, like Mr. Bush’s, was run by movement conservatives ­ people who built their careers by serving the alliance of wealthy individuals, corporate interests and the religious right that took shape in the 1960s and 1970s. And both cronyism and abuse of power are part of the movement conservative package.

Congress needs to move quickly to fix this problem. At a minimum, every poor infant born here ought to be automatically enrolled in Medicaid. Congress also needs to simplify the Medicaid application process instead of making it more onerous. That would be fairer to qualified applicants and could help reduce the ranks of the uninsured.

3.18.2007 Amid Concerns, FBI Lapses Went On -- Records Collection Brought Internal Questions But Little Scrutiny By R. Jeffrey Smith and John Solomon, Washington Post Staff Writers

In a letter to Fine that was released along with the March 9 report, Mueller acknowledged that the bureau's agents had used unacceptable shortcuts, violated internal policies and made mistakes in their use of exigent circumstance letters..
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"In practice, if you have already got the records, the incentive to do the paperwork is reduced," the senior (unnamed) FBI official said.

“If only I had known then what I know now ...” has been the persistent refrain of the war supporters who subsequently disowned the fiasco. But the embarrassing reality is that much of the damning truth about the administration’s case for war and its hubristic expectations for a cakewalk were publicly available before the war, hiding in plain sight, to be seen by anyone who wanted to look.

3.16.2007 Letter from Waxman to Bush:

The testimony of Mr. Knodell appears to describe White House decisions that were inconsistent with the directives of Executive Order 12958, which you signed in March 2003. Under this executive order, the White House is required to "take appropriate and prompt corrective action" whenever there is a release of classified information. Yet Mr. Knodell could describe no such actions after the disclosure of Ms. Wilson's identity.

Taken as a whole, the testimony at today's hearing described breach after breach of national security requirements at the White House. The first breach was the disclosure of Ms. Wilson's identity. Other breaches included the failure of Mr. Rove and other officials to report their disclosures as required by law, the failure of the White House to initiate the prompt investigation required by the executive order, and the failure of the White House to suspend the security clearances of the implicated officials.

To assist the Committee in its investigation into these issues, I request that you provide the Committee with a complete account of the steps that the White House took following the disclosure of Ms. Wilson's identity (1) to investigate how the leak occurred; (2) to review the security clearances of the White House officials implicated in the leak; (3) to impose administrative or disciplinary sanctions on the officials involved in the leak; and (4) to review and revise existing White House security procedures to prevent future breaches of national security.

Message to young activists: If you do your homework, have your facts right and the merits on your side, and then build a constituency for your ideals through the Internet, you, too, can be at the table of the biggest deal in history. Or as Mr. Krupp puts it: the TXU example shows that truth plus passion plus the Internet “can create an irresistible tide for change.”

McNulty, Moschella and other Justice officials were enraged when they found out about the communications last Thursday, when Sampson produced the documents, according to officials who declined to speak for attribution in discussing internal Justice matters.

In January 2006, he had begun looking into allegations that Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt had rewarded GOP supporters with lucrative contracts to run the state's driver's license offices. Cummins handled the case because U.S. attorneys in Missouri had recused themselves over potential conflicts of interest.

The difference in the meaning of accountability also follows from the general difference between progressive and conservative values. In strict father morality, which forms the basis of conservative values, the father is the unquestionable moral authority to be obeyed. It is he who holds those under his authority accountable and metes out punishment accordingly. In the conservative worldview, there are legitimate authorities whose job is to hold others accountable and mete punishment for failures of individual responsibility. Their individual responsibility and whatever accountability they have is satisfied when they hold others beneath them accountable and carry out punishment.

To progressives, one is accountable to those one is responsible for -- those affected and possibly harmed by one's actions. In government, accountability is paired with transparency. Government officials are supposed to be "transparent," that is, to tell the public what one is doing and why. The why is an "account" -- an explanation for one's actions. One can then judge the performance of government officials as they act as well as after they act, and judge on that basis whether they have carried out their responsibilities. This progressive view accords with nurturant parent families, in which parents have a responsibility to explain to their children why they are telling them what they can and cannot do.