alternative hippopotamus

Washington Post-It Note:

U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president and can be fired for any reason. But the contradictory explanations for the dismissals, and the steady release of internal email messages suggesting the plan had evolved over two years in consultation with White House officials, damaged the department’s reputation and credibility. The report will sift through all of the conflicting data about prosecutors who found themselves on lists prepared by D. Kyle Sampson, the former chief of staff for Gonzales.

At this point I’ve read enough of Jane Mayer’s “The Dark Side” to know that there is probably some memo written by David Addington that says that the President’s War-Time powers include the right to intervene in US elections. What’s left of the domestic common sense would argue that Karl Rove, Kyle Sampson, and Monica Goodling can’t staff the Justice Department with doctrinaire freepers who use the office to make elections Republican friendly.

I’m not arguing this as some hypothetical. This appears to be what’s taken place. I only wish there was a way of letting my local newspaper understand this.

From a close reading of DC journalists, a pattern is emerging. There’s something about writing for Time, Newsweek, the Washington Post, etc., that changes one’s perspective on issues that I’d call Civics 101: Just and Equitable Societies for Dummies.

Take Matt Cooper (please):

Maybe Bush would be better off with some national unity type attorney general. But he shouldn’t have to neuter himself. He has a right to appoint who he wants if they’re within parameters of integrity and competence. Olson more than meets those standards. And if Dems reject him, that’s a bad precedent for their presidencies. They ought to be free to appoint liberals who are as partisan and brilliant as Olson.

Umh, no. Integrity and competence are necessary, but not sufficient requirements for an attorney general. There must also be a standard of independence. We had such an extreme case in Gonzales that the bar is probably permanently lowered, but still. You can’t permit the Justice Department to be used to get your boss re-elected. You can’t use the office of US Attorney to prosecute your political enemies, and give your buddies a get out of jail free card.

Secondly, the advice and consent of the Senate is there, not because someone thought it would be a delightful bit of formality to dress up the president’s rubber stamp. There’s a great number of reasons not to trust the chief executive. The consensual nature of the Senate is a necessary means of preventing the president from totally f’ing things up. And make no mistake, even with an opposition party leading the Senate, this president is doing a heckuva job of f’ing things up.

If advice and consent is what Cooper means by the president “neutering himself,” then I would call that a just and equitable neutering.

If you’re a loyal Bushie, it’s currently tsunami season.

According to Truthout, this week’s NOW will cover voter caging and possible connections with the Attorney Purge scandal.

Here’s the scoop:

Previously undisclosed documents detail how Republican operatives, with the knowledge of several White House officials, engaged in an illegal, racially-motivated effort to suppress tens of thousands of votes during the 2004 presidential campaign in a state where George W. Bush was trailing his Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry.

The documents also contain details describing how Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign officials, and at least one individual who worked for White House political adviser Karl Rove, planned to stop minorities residing in Cuyahoga County from voting on election day.

Froomkin:

Tim Grieve, in Salon, finds this fascinating and troubling e-mail chain:

“On March 3, [Justice Department spokesman Brian] Roehrkasse forwarded to his Justice Department colleagues a copy of a Washington Post story on the purge that he said was ‘far better than most recent Post stories on this subject.’ The piece minimized White House involvement in the purge; quoting sources, it said that the White House had approved the list of prosecutors to be fired only after ’senior Justice Department officials identified the prosecutors they believed were not doing enough to carry out President Bush’s policies on immigration, firearms and other issues.’ For the folks working the issue at the Department of Justice, that amounted to a victory. Deputy Attorney General Richard Hertling declared the Post’s piece ‘by far and away the best story I’ve seen on the subject’ and expressed relief that an accompanying Post editorial– ‘The Justice Department’s firing of a group of U.S. attorneys is neither as sinister as critics suggest nor as benign as the department would have you believe’ — was ‘not a bad beating, though against our interests.’

“‘Great work, Brian,’ [then-Gonzales chief of staff Kyle] Sampson said in an e-mail to group. ‘Kudos to you and the [deputy attorney general].’”

Looking back at the original story, the Justice Department spin was that the White House did not direct or plan the US Attorney Purge, but merely approved of it after all the Goody-Goodlings at Justice signed off on it.

As for the motivation for the purge, the Post story indicates that it was: “the concern raised by various members of Congress and law enforcement officials that some U.S. attorneys were not following Bush administration policies or federal sentencing rules, administration officials said.”

Isn’t that great? The Justice Department successfully spun the Washington Post. Just the way our founding fathers wanted the country to work. The Executive branch hatches a scheme to maintain Republican Party control of government through the placement of compliant US Attorneys. These attorneys then prosecute “voter fraud,” a rare infraction at the polls whose eradication requires purging voter rolls of likely Democrats. Then, and here’s where the rubber meets the Fourth Estate, the Justice Department spins the story to the Washington Post. The Post prints the spin as fact, and the Justice Department celebrates to a rousing chorus of “boys will be boys.”

US Attorneys aren’t the only ones with a compliant streak it turns out.

I’ve heard some speculation that the investigation by the OSC is pure head fake, and that it’s unlikely to do any serious investigation of Karl Rove’s activities. This article at MoJo (not to be confused with MoDo) supports that view:

Just minutes before the September 7 ceremony was to begin, Smith received word that the event was off because a relative of an osc staffer had died. It seemed “kind of fishy” to Smith; indeed, an osc source told me the excuse was so transparent as to be “ludicrous.” The real problem, the source said, was that Bloch—a Bush appointee who, employees say, shares his boss’ antipathy for dissent—had learned that Smith was planning to speak at a press conference sponsored by the whistleblower group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (peer), a persistent critic of the osc. The peer event went forward as planned, and at it Smith told the press that he felt the osc “bears some examination.” True, he had been vindicated, but many of his colleagues who’d made similar disclosures had been ignored, and the prison conditions had not changed. “I cannot help but feel that my experience is a beacon of false hope for public servants who are trying to correct wrongdoing,” he said.

A number of blogs have remarked on this piece from McClatchy tying the pursuit of “voting fraud” to “voting while a minority.”

It’s an important piece, and really a marker for a study of how the firm of Bush, Rove, Cheney et al attempted to turn the Federal Government into a Republican vote-getting machine. When I call it a “marker” I mean a point in time when the public begins to perceive that the conspiracy isn’t something dreamt up by aging hippies at their keyboards.

I wanted to zero in on this quote:

Justice Department spokesperson Cynthia Magnuson called any allegation that the department has rolled back minority voting rights “fundamentally flawed.”

She said the department has “a completely robust record when it comes to enforcing federal voting rights laws,” citing its support last year for reauthorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the filing of at least 20 suits to ensure that language services are available to non-English speaking voters.

There are two uses of the word “robust” that I’m familiar with: 1.) the ability to withstand difficult, even withering conditions gracefully. 2.) a powerful smell, usually used to describe coffee.

But, she’s saying the record is robust. Does that mean that no matter what new laws Justice comes up with, the record shows that some minorities are still voting? Or, is she saying that when ground to a fine powder the record has a powerful odor?

Since I don’t work in one of those places where everyone has a TV with cable access, I’m dependent on the Washington Post, FDL, TPM, etc., for coverage. So, I didn’t get to see this first hand. (If you don’t work in DC, it might surprise you to know that offices with political duties will often have TVs tuned to CNN or Fox) But, this bit from Gonzo on the provision in the Patriot Act that permitted the White House to name USA’s without Senate confirmation caught my attention:

Gonzales said he did not support the provision with the intention to avoid Senate involvement in confirming U.S. attorneys but to take interim appointments out of the hands of federal judges when there were vacancies.

He insisted that he “never liked the idea” of using the provision to bypass the Senate and that “quite frankly I thought it was a dumb idea.”

Gonzales came under sharp questioning on this point from Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who pointed to other testimony indicating that he did not initially reject a plan to use the provision in precisely that way.

The attorney general said he could not say who came up with the idea of changing the law in the first place. Congress has since voted to repeal the provision.

So far, sneaking this provision into the Patriot Act has been portrayed as the lone act of a deranged bushnik on the Judiciary Committee. From Gonzo’s description it sounds like the idea was discussed inside of Justice, and he approved it, because he believes that Federal judges are hacks, and the president can better decide on these things from within his bubble, or cocoon, or lair, or wherever he goes to avoid dissenting opinion. The part about cutting Congress out, that was a dumb idea, but hey, life’s too short to dot all the i’s on these things.

He says that he can’t remember who came up with the idea of the provision. Were there that many conspiracies in the air at the same time, that he lost track of who was doing the juggling?

When I first read about the US8 scandal, I saw it in fairly conventional terms. By that I mean fairly conventional for the mafia. Like the plot of a Scorcese movie the sequence of events goes:

1.) Identify 8 USA’s who you feel haven’t wetted your beak sufficiently. At least, as of late.
2.) Have those 8 USA’s whacked.
3.) Put in their places 8 that are nearer and dearer to you, and are more likely to wet your beak.

Like a Scorcese movie, you can even imagine the Don saying to the hit squad on their way to whack the USA’s: “Remember. Don’t do anything stupid.”

Of course, it unfolds that in their “enthusiasm” to get the job done, the hit guys do something stupid.

For instance, whacking Iglesias for doing his duty in the Naval Reserve:

It may be one of the more unintentionally hilarious angles to the purge scandal so far. Administration officials couldn’t admit the real reason to fire Iglesias — he refused to politicize his office and cave to pressure about prosecuting New Mexico Dems without cause — so they came up with an after-the-fact rationalization: his 40 days a year in the Navy Reserve was too much time away from the job.

D’oh!

On last night’s NewsHour, former White House assistant counsel Noel Francisco argued that the US8 scandal is overblown, amounting to nothing more than a PR debacle.

From the interview with Gwen Ifill:

NOEL FRANCISCO: The mistakes were mistakes of public relations. The White House and the Department of Justice didn’t get all their ducks in a row. They didn’t know what communications had actually been made and what process had been used to arrive at the decisions when they sent members of the administration up to Capitol Hill to explain those decisions.

GWEN IFILL: So it was a P.R. mistake to testify inaccurately to Congress?

NOEL FRANCISCO: It was a P.R. mistake because they didn’t get their ducks in the row. I don’t think the people who testified thought they were testifying inaccurately. I think there was a failure of the meeting of the minds within the administration, where the people who had the information didn’t communicate it to the people who were supposed to be testifying on the Hill.

Now, I’m going to phrase things a little less charitably than Mr. Francisco. The AG Chief of Staff was conspiring, or attempting to conspire with someone in the White House to prevent Senate confirmation of politically motivated nominees for a powerful office, US Attorney. At some point the conspiracy reached into the Senate Judiciary Comittee when a third person slipped a provision into the Patriot Act, with the effect of enabling Justice from preventing Senate participation in approving US Attorney’s.

Usually I hear the expression “ducks in a row” to imply preparation or organization. In Mr. Francisco’s case the phrase takes on a whole new meaning, apparently as a euphemism for conspiracy.

A conspiracy of ducks, no doubt.

Gonzo appears to be a good nickname for the current AG:

In testimony on Jan. 18, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales assured the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Justice Department had no intention of avoiding Senate input on the hiring of U.S. attorneys.

Just a month earlier, D. Kyle Sampson, who was then Gonzales’s chief of staff, laid out a plan to do just that. In an e-mail, he detailed a strategy for evading Arkansas Democrats in installing Tim Griffin, a former GOP operative and protege of presidential adviser Karl Rove, as the U.S. attorney in Little Rock.

“We should gum this to death,” Sampson wrote to a White House aide on Dec. 19. “[A]sk the senators to give Tim a chance . . . then we can tell them we’ll look for other candidates, ask them for recommendations, evaluate the recommendations, interview their candidates, and otherwise run out the clock. All of this should be done in ‘good faith,’ of course.”

Since wingnuttia is so fond of the Clinton did it, too defense, maybe someone can point me to where Clinton was trying to undermine the separation of powers?