Friday Afternoon News Dump

Boston.com: Boston City Hall tops the list of the "World's Top 10 Ugliest Buildings and Monuments" compiled by VirtualTourist.com.

I love this headline: Summers may be off of Treasury short list. A guy who thinks I am biologically unqualified to understand math and science has no business in high government office. Neanderthals need not apply. We've all got the necessaries, Larry.

Vermont Senator Pat Leahy sez Traitor Joe Lieberman should lose his chairmanship. So does his colleague Bernie Sanders. They're right. Lieberman is frantically trying to save his plum, but when he tried to call Obama to talk about it, he got pawned off on Biden. Reap what you sowed, you sanctimonious gasbag. Connecticut voters overwhelmingly disapprove of the job their senior Senator is doing. 2012 can't come fast enough for the Nutmeg State.

The assistant US Attorneys trying Alabama governor Don Siegelman passed notes to the deliberating jury through the U.S. Marshals. All of those people should be fired, and the lawyers should all be disbarred. It's a shocking breach of ethics. Par for the course for the Bush Crime Family. Those AUSAs were only taking their cue from the U.S. Attorney Leura Canary, who was writing emails to them long after she had supposedly recused herself from the case because of a conflict of interest.

Ann Dunwoody is now the nation's first ever female four-star general.

Sunday Morning News Round-Up

Can't get enough of Peek-a-Boo Panda

George W. McConstitutionFucker would like to steal one more election, so has directed his Justice Department to intervene in the Ohio fight to force new voters to vote by provisional ballot if their registration conflicts with some other database (disenfranchisement by typo). Now we'll find out if the Democratic morons who voted for AG Michael Mukasey were right, or if he's just a Republican hack like all the rest. (And remember that Bush is asking the Justice Dept. to do the same thing that they fired all the U.S. Attorneys for refusing to do, bring false charges of voter fraud. There ain't any.)

McCain's circular firing squad aims at Palin: she's "going rogue" and a "diva". McCain faces a Palin insurgency! Teehee.

Another endorsement for Obama: Anchorage Daily News (again, tee hee).

Republican dirty tricks: The Pennsylvania state Republican Party sent out an email to 75,000 Jewish voters saying that if you vote for Obama, there will be a second Holocaust.

Oregon Senator Gordon Smith(R-Pretending to be a Dem This Year) owns a frozen food company that supplies 10% of the nation's frozen vegetables. They irrigated their fields with sewage. Or as Dr. Murphy says at firedoglake, "Gordon Smith's Menu for America: Eat Sh*t And Die". Ewwwwwwwwwww.

If you have the stomach for it, watch the video from the Las Vegas Sun of this angry, fearful and racist group outside a Palin rally. These people are frightening.

And one completely nonpolitical topic: Isiah Thomas OD's on sleeping pills [suicide?], 911 got called and took him to the hospital; then he tried to say it was his 17-year-old daughter who needed help. Except for the local police chief who said, hey, it was him, not her. As the police chief said, "[W]hy they're throwing her under the bus is beyond my ability to understand."

Obama Lawyer Bob Bauer on Olbermann

Obama attorney Bob Bauer: Republicans are already under investigation for ginning up fake voter fraud claims (in the U.S. Attorney scandal); we're not going to let it happen again.

Election Protection News

1. The big news is that the Supreme Court delivered a quick rebuke to the wingnutty 6th Circuit, overruling their decision to order the Ohio Secretary of State to have to "review" 600,000 new voter registrations against driver's license and social security databases. This prevents disenfranchisement by typo, whereby perfectly qualified voters are denied the right to vote because a letter in their name was entered incorrectly (that would have made Joe Sam the Plumber ineligible, as his name is Wurzelbacher, but the registrar has him listed as Worzelbacher).

[It must be noted that the decision, while good in protecting voting rights on the eve of this election, denies the GOP a private right of action to enforce the statute. That means that only government action can enforce that law. That is a bad principle in civil rights cases when you have a virulently anti-civil-rights administration like the Bush Administration, who allow civil rights violations to proliferate by not bringing such action. Good decision on this narrow case, made on a terrible basis for many future cases.]

2. David Iglesias, the New Mexico Assistant Attorney General who was fired for failing to bring bogus election fraud cases the Bush Administration was pushing in 2006, says the hysteria about ACORN being whipped up by the Republicans is equally bogus. [And whenever I mention David Igleasias, I have to mention that his actions in the JAG Corps were the basis for the Tom Cruise character in A Few Good Men. "You can't handle the truth!" indeed.]

David Iglesias says he's shocked by the news, leaked today to the Associated Press, that the FBI is pursuing a voter-fraud investigation into ACORN just weeks before the election.

"I'm astounded that this issue is being trotted out again," Iglesias told TPMmuckraker. "Based on what I saw in 2004 and 2006, it's a scare tactic." In 2006, Iglesias was fired as U.S. attorney thanks partly to his reluctance to pursue voter-fraud cases as aggressively as DOJ wanted -- one of several U.S. attorneys fired for inappropriate political reasons, according to a recently released report by DOJ's Office of the Inspector General.

Iglesias, who has been the most outspoken of the fired U.S. attorneys, went on to say that the FBI's investigation seemed designed to inappropriately create a "boogeyman" out of voter fraud.

3. The AP (the AP!) factchecks the McCain campaign's allegations about ACORN and rejects them.

[I]n alleging voter fraud, McCain goes too far. To commit fraud, a person would have to show up on Election Day with identification bearing the fake name.

4. In perhaps the best news, the Obama campaign is aggressively tying the bogus ACORN investigation and the U.S. Attorney Scandal, including conducting a telephone conference with the media today:

The General Counsel of the Obama campaign is currently holding a media conference call to "Announce Major Action Taken Today To Address Illegal Conduct and Improprieties in the Sham "Anti-Fraud" Campaign Orchestrated By McCain-Palin and the RNC."

Check out this letter from the Obama campaign to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, asking for an investigation into ties between Bush's Justice Department and the McCain campaign's "systematic development and dissemination of unsupported, spurious allegations of vote fraud." I.e., don't try ginning up voter fraud prosecutions from the Justice Department in this election, my friends. This Democrat won't be caught napping.

Barack Obama is a fighting Democrat, and it's been a long time since we have seen a Democrat wage such a tough, disciplined fight.

Today's Hearing on Hans von Vote Suppressor

I didn't get to see the Rules Committee hearing on von Spakovsky's nomination to the Federal Election Commission today, so here is a round-up of reactions.

McClatchy wins both the headline and reporting award with this story:

McClatchy: U.S. ATTORNEYS
Ex-Justice Dept. lawyer can't recall his role in controversial policies

WASHINGTON - Another former Justice Department lawyer went before Congress on Wednesday with few answers for his Democratic interrogators and a spotty memory.

Hans von Spakovsky, who's seeking a full six-year term on the Federal Election Commission, deflected questions about whether he undermined voting rights laws, saying, "I was not the decision maker in the front office of the Civil Rights Division."

Time and again during his confirmation hearing, he cited either the attorney-client privilege or a cloudy memory for his purported role in restricting minorities' voting rights.

Von Spakovsky couldn't remember blocking an investigation into complaints that a Minnesota Republican official was discriminating against Native American voters before the 2004 election.

Under oath, he also said he didn't recall seeing data from the state of Georgia that would have undercut a push by senior officials within the Civil Rights Division to approve the state's tough new law requiring photo IDs of all voters. The data showed that 300,000 Georgia voters lacked driver's licenses. A federal judge later threw out the law as unconstitutional.

John Lewis, who spilled his blood for voting rights, and other Georgia Democrats have opposed von Spakovsky's nomination, 'saying his appointment "could potentially turn back the clock on 50 years of progress" in voting rights.'

salon.com: The grilling of von Spakovsky

NYTimes Editorial: Another Sorry Ascension

[] President Bush gave him a recess appointment to the commission last year. The new Democratic-controlled Senate now has the opportunity to strike a blow against electoral skullduggery with a blunt rejection of Mr. Spakovsky’s nomination for a full six-year term.

Slate: Implausible Deniability
The Internet foils fudging by three "voter fraud" warriors.

Senator Dick Durbin questions von Spakovsky:

Good Reads

SI Neg. 77-10004. Date: 1977...Mammoth, Ice Age Hall, National Museum of Natural History ..Credit: Chip Clark (Smithsonian Institution)
flickr
I'm on the road today, so here's a sampling of online reads:

Boston Globe: Doctor blogs about his own malpractice trial; opposing lawyer finds out, case settles. Arrogant dummy.

New York Times: Greywater Guerrillas in California reusing household water with Rube Goldberg contraptions. My favorite part of the article is on page two: "Two years later, as the Guerrilla Greywater Girls (at the time, Cleo Woelfle-Erskine was a woman) they published a “Guide to Water,” a crude sheaf of photocopies...." So California.

The guy Rachel Paulose replaced as USAttorney for the District of Minnesota, Tom Heffelfinger? The LATimes reports that he was ousted because he was too vigilant in protecting the right of Native Americans to vote.

Digby on the latest suicide at Guantanamo: It's a terrorist attack! Asymetrical PR!

From McClatchy, Joe Lieberman gets a message from the troops he visited in Iraq: "We don't feel like we're making any progress." Joe Lieberman responded "La la la, I can't hear you." Well, not really, but he may as well: "I think it's important we don't lose our will," he said. "To pull out would be a disaster."

From the Consumerist, a comparison of fast food salads v. fast food burgers. Go ahead, have the burger, it's healthier.

What Is Voter Caging?

Cage him for stealing elections.

What the heck was Maniacal Goodling talking about when she testified about voter caging? It was a very confusing moment in her testimony. The Congresscritters seemed flummoxed. She said it was a direct mail term. That made no sense to me. Tonight I stumbled upon the answer.

Here's how reporter Greg Palast describes voter caging:

The Bush-Cheney operatives sent hundreds of thousands of letters marked "Do not forward" to voters' homes. Letters returned ("caged") were used as evidence to block these voters' right to cast a ballot on grounds they were registered at phony addresses. Who were the evil fakers? Homeless men, students on vacation and --- you got to love this --- American soldiers. Oh yeah: most of them are Black voters.

Why weren't these African-American voters home when the Republican letters arrived? The homeless men were on park benches, the students were on vacation --- and the soldiers were overseas. Go to Baghdad, lose your vote. Mission Accomplished.

Palast has 500 emails -- many of them Karl Rove's emails that the White House now claims are lost -- because they were sent accidentally to whitehouse.org, a domain that is owned by a friend of Palast. (They meant to send them to whitehouse.com -- Doh!)

So our soldiers registered to vote, then went to Iraq. The Republican party sends mail to their official address, but it is returned as undeliverable, because the soldier is in Iraq. So when that soldier's absentee ballot comes in, and the elections personnel go to count that ballot, they find that the ballot has been challenged as being from a phony address. Because the soldier was overseas in George W. Bush's war for democracy. And the guy who led this effort was Tim Griffin, Karl Rove's protege, who is now the USAttorney for the District of Arkansas. The chicken now guards the henhouse.

Some of the emails (SUBJECT: caging) are in the middle of this post on Palast's research.

I highly recommend watching all three Youtube clips, below, in which Palast lays out the caging scheme and how it related to the US Attorney scandal. These are felonies and impeachable offenses.


Part 1 (8:18)


Part 2 (4:58)


Part 3 (9:07)

Republican Memory Loss

hat tip to Americablog

Another Modest Proposal

DOJ Barbie: I don't know nothing 'bout vote caging!
In Re Monical Goodling's testimony yesterday (Monical is a typo, but I'm inclined to let it stay) I must apologize for my aborted attempt at liveblogging. I think I was distracted by the prospect of the Champions League final in the afternoon, and didn't want to get tied down to the computer.

But I did listen to much of the testimony, and it struck me once again that most members of Congress couldn't cross examine their way out of a paper bag. Watching the rows and rows of Congresscritters lined up to question DOJ Barbie reminded me of the Watergate hearings, back in the day. Remember when the committee investigating the breakin used staff to do the questioning? Remember attorney Sam Dash, who was appointed committee counsel by Senator Sam Ervin? It was Sam Dash doing the questioning the day Alexander Butterfield revealed the existence of Nixon's secret taping system.

I wish the Congressional committees questioning these witnesses would appoint a professional to assist them. Now, who is both qualified and has the time? How about recently fired New Mexico USAG David Iglesias? He's not working and he certainly knows the issues here. He's handsome and telegenic. There may be complaints that he's partisan, but he's a Republican. Besides, this isn't a criminal trial. It's a political hearing, and both sides are allowed to be as political as they want.

John Conyers, hire David Iglesias. Let him question. Would there be any
better showdown ever, than to watch Iglesias question Karl Rove? YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH! (A Few Good Men was based on a case tried by Iglesias.)

US Attorney News

LATimes: 'Cowboy up,' Alberto Gonzales
A fired U.S. attorney calls on the attorney general to serve the people, not politics.

LATimes: Goodling: a Power player behind Justice's scenes
The former Justice insider, a mystery to many, is set to testify under immunity in Congress on the U.S. attorneys' firings.

WaPo: Officials Describe Interference by Former Gonzales Aide [Monica Goodling]

Out Long National Wait Is Over

Monica Goodling, the former Justice Department's White House liaison, arrives on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, May 23, 2007, to testify before the House Judiciary Committee. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

A new photo of Monica Goodling.

We're all so tired of the old one:



Looks like she's had an extreme makeup makeover.

US Attorney Purge: Stealing Elections

Must-read article:

buzzflash.com: Greg Palast, Author of Armed Madhouse, on How Rove May Have Already Stolen the 2008 Election

BuzzFlash: You’re having incredible success with the new expanded paperback edition of Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans -- Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild. Of course, the electronic voting machines and how they function is a very significant issue, but your specialty has really been how the Bush/Rove GOP political machine keeps persons who are likely to vote Democratic or Independent from voting.

Greg Palast: Yes. People ask me: Are they going to steal the 2008 election? No, they’ve already stolen the 2008 election. We still have a chance of swiping it back, but the reason I’ve expanded and put out the new edition of Armed Madhouse is to tell you how they will steal in 2008, and what to do about it. That’s one of the main new things. Plus a special chapter on New Orleans and my bust down there.

Of course, I was very flattered that the first review of the new edition of Armed Madhouse was written by Karl Rove and the Rove-bots -- it was subpoenaed by the House Judiciary Committee -- I can’t make this up. On February 7th, the Rove team, which had been writing several e-mails screaming about Armed Madhouse and "that British reporter," Greg Palast, were gloating that no U.S. media had picked up my stories. And they had a .pdf file attached. Of course, the reason my book was subpoenaed is that it has to do with the US prosecutor firings. The prosecutor firings were 100% about influencing elections -- not about loyalty to Bush, which is what The New York Times wrote. The administration team couldn’t tolerate appointees who wouldn’t go along with crime. In the book I present the evidence that Karl Rove directed a guy named Tim Griffin to target suppressing the votes of African American students, homeless men, and soldiers. Nice guy. They actually challenged the votes and successfully removed tens of thousands of legal voters from the voter rolls, same as they did in 2000. But instead of calling them felons, they said that they had suspect addresses.

BuzzFlash: In which election cycle?

Greg Palast: 2004. And in 2006 and 2004, they challenged tens of thousands of black soldiers. They stopped their votes from being counted when they were mailed in from Baghdad. Go to Baghdad and lose your vote -- mission accomplished.

BuzzFlash: How did they do that?

Greg Palast: By sending letters to the homes of soldiers, marked "do not forward." When they came back undelivered, they said: Aha! Illegal voter registered from a false address. And when their ballot came in from Fallujah, it was challenged. The soldier didn’t know it. Their vote was lost. Over half a million votes were challenged and lost by the Republicans -- absentee ballots. Three million voters who went to the polls found themselves challenged by the Republicans. This was not a small operation. It was a multi-million dollar, wholesale theft operation.

They’re right that I’m a British reporter, because I put this story on British TV, not on American TV, which won’t touch it. [BuzzFlash note: Palast writes for British papers and reports on the BBC, but he is a product of the San Fernando Valley and the University of Chicago, 100% American.] But our election was a complete, total fraud. This is grand theft -- no question. It’s not a dirty trick; it’s a felony crime.

I’m working with Bobby Kennedy, who is a voting rights attorney. He said, “This is not just an icky, horrible thing that people do wearing white sheets. This is a felony crime.” [paraphrase] And the guy they put in charge of this criminal ring to knock out voters is a guy named Tim Griffin. Today, Tim Griffin is -- badda-bing -- U.S. Attorney for Arkansas. When they fired the honest guys, they put in the Rove-bots to fix the 2008 election. That’s what I’m saying -- it’s already being stolen, as we speak. Tim Griffin is the perpetrator who’s become the prosecutor, and that’s what’s going down right now.

BuzzFlash: You have been questioned about prosecutor-gate and about the theft of the election of 2008. But these replacement prosecutors are still in place, not to mention the ones who have cooperated with Bush. Gonzales has basically told the House Judiciary Committee, make my day. I’m staying on. It’s over with. You asked me questions. I didn’t give you answers, but you don’t have the courage to impeach me, so I’m staying.

Greg Palast: That’s the game, too. Congress is shooting at the glove puppet. I shoot at the puppeteers. It’s not Gonzales. He’s meaningless. He’s a nothing. He should go because he allowed it to happen, and that’s a crime. When I was a racketeering investigator, we used to call it “willful failure to know.” He can’t just say to his staff, I know what Rove is doing, but don’t tell me about it. He would still be liable for criminal conspiracy of obstruction of justice. That’s why Monica Goodling took the Fifth. Not knowing doesn’t mean you’re not guilty, especially when you went out of your way not to know.

Gonzales should be read his rights and carted away. But it’s the puppeteers behind him -- Rove and Harriet Miers -- who were deeply involved in the prosecutor hits. No one’s talking about her. This is the woman who went from head of the Texas State Lottery to nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court by George Bush, and no one asked how that happened. They said: Harriet who? But they didn’t ask how that happened. They said, oh, she’s loyal to Bush. She’s the one who did the payoffs to cover up the fact that George Senior got George Junior out of the war in Vietnam. Do you think that that was done just by daddy making a call? Money had to be paid -- lots and lots of money to keep people quiet -- $23 million. That is something I reported on BBC Television and in the Guardian newspaper. We’ve given them plenty of time to challenge that story about the payoffs. We’ve never gotten a peep from these guys. And unlike CBS, the BBC has not withdrawn the story that the fix was put in to get Chicken George out of Vietnam. No one has challenged our story, nor have we withdrawn a comment on our story that the payoffs were made to keep it quiet.

BuzzFlash: Let’s focus for the moment on voter suppression, and we'll return later to other elements of the voter manipulation story.

Greg Palast: I have it all in Armed Madhouse, including in the three new chapters. First and foremost, is that it’s not one thing. It ain’t just electronic voting, guys. You go, oh, we have paper ballots, we’re saved, we’re saved. Bulls***! Wake up! Hello! Let’s remember that in Florida and Ohio, they didn’t have computer voting. So all the stuff about Diebold -- Ohio was not stolen by computers, because they didn’t have computers there. In fact, they were thrilled when people complained about computers because they could keep the junky punch cards in. That doesn’t mean that computers are safe. As I point out in the new chapter, the Republicans held on to Katherine Harris’ seat -- and we don’t want to think too carefully about that image -- they held onto Katherine Harris’ seat with 300 votes, while 18,000 votes disappeared in the computers. So they do use computers. That was a pure, straight-up, shoplift of the Congressional seat.

BuzzFlash: A House committee just voted not to pursue an investigation of that election, despite the disappearance of 18,000 votes.

Greg Palast: That’s sick -- deeply, deviously sick. First of all, in New York and other states, when votes are in question, they simply redo them. People talk about recount -- forget it. Redo the vote. When the machines collapse, then there’s no question that there was monkey business.

Gonzales Puts The Squeeze on Ashcroft in ICU

The big political news yesterday was James Comey's astonishing testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee (watch it on the YouTube video, above), in which he told the incredible story of Abu Gonzales and Andy Card making a late night run to the intensive care unit room of John Ashcroft, trying to get him to do an end-around around Acting US Attorney Comey's refusal to reauthorize the illegal NSA wiretap program. And then Bush went ahead and authorized the program anyway, even though the Justice Department had told him explicitly: IT WAS ILLEGAL. That's called a felony, folks. Probably multiple felonies.

Watch that YouTube video. It's like a scene from a film, except it's real.

Gonzales was White House counsel when he tried to put the squeeze on critically ill Ashcroft. It is incredible that he is now Attorney General. I am amazed that the US now has a worse AG than Witchcroft himself, but clearly that's the case.

I didn't have to time to do this story justice, so read these excellent analyses around blogtopia:

Glenn Greenwald, salon.com: Comey's testimony raises new and vital questions about the NSA scandal

TPMuckraker.com: Comey Details White House Attempt to Force Approval of Secret Program

ThinkProgress: Comey Breaks Silence: White House Tried To Force Incapacitated Ashcroft To Back Spying Program

Front paged here:

WaPo: Gonzales Hospital Episode Detailed
Ailing Ashcroft Pressured on Spy Program, Former Deputy Says

NYTimes: President Intervened in Dispute Over Eavesdropping

Abu Gonzales Testimony: A Joke

So we must turn to Jon Stewart for analysis:

Karl Rove Running Justice Department

The Bush political team has been running the Justice Department as their own political witchhunting organization. Karl Rove's little minions are calling US Attorneys right and left. No wonder there were so many investigations of Democrats, and so few investigations of corrupt Republicans (of 309 politicians investigated by US Attorneys 2000-2006, 262 were Democrats, 37 Republicans, 10 Independents)

Need proof of this? Look at the chart Rhode Island Senator (and former US Attorney) Sheldon Whitehouse used in his questioning of Alberto "Mini-Chimperor" Gonzales. The US Attorneys are supposed to be independent. Under Bill Clinton, there were only four people who were allowed to contact US Attorneys regarding cases: the President, the Vice President, the White House Counsel, and the Deputy White House Counsel. No one else was allowed to contact US Attorneys.

Under the Bush Administration, 447 officials -- mostly staff -- are allowed to contact US Attorneys; as ThinkProgress points out, that is a 10,325 % increase. 417 loyal Bushies White House officials (many working from their RNC email accounts, I suspect) and 30 loyal Bushies Department of Justice officials were allowed direct contact with US Attorneys.

The corruption of this administration is unparalleled.



dailykos: "The Chart" is the smoking gun of WH/DOJ political Influence

News Round-Up, Thursday, April 12, 2007

Thick smoke rises from the site of an explosion at Baghdad's Al-Sarafiyah bridge where a suicide bomber blew up a truck, 12 April, 2007. A suicide bomber has blown himself up in the Iraqi parliament canteen in Baghdad's Green Zone, killing three people in a major breach of security at the country's most heavily guarded site.(AFP/Ali Yussef)

A suicide/homicide bomber blew himself up in the Iraqi parliament cafeteria this morning. That would be in Baghdad, which the surge is supposed to be making safe, and within the heavily fortified U.S. Green Zone. George Bush's disaster continues.

The real story behind the US Attorney Purge, from Talking Points Memo. It's a giant Karl Rove operation designed to keep poor and black and Democratic voters from exercising their right to vote:

Republican party officials and elected officials use bogus claims of vote fraud to do three things: 1) to stymie voter registration drives and get-out-the-vote efforts in poor and minority neighborhoods, 2) purge voter rolls of legitimate voters and 3) institute voter ID laws aimed at making it harder for low-income and minority voters to vote.

The White House claims that all those off-the-books emails on the RNC/GWB43 servers have just disappeared. How convenient. Jesselyn Radack, a Justice Department lawyer who was hounded out of the department for challenging the prosecution of John Walker Lindh, has a dailykos diary on how emails are forever. (She found emails the Justice Dept. had erased in order to keep from producing them in response to a federal discovery order; when she revealed this, she was fired! Justice, Bush style.) 50 White House officials have used the RNC accounts; of course Karl Rove is one of them.

George Bush's Pentagon announced yesterday that EVERY U.S. Army soldier's tour will be extended from 12 to 15 months. George Bush is breaking the Army.

George Bush is looking for a 'war czar', but three generals he's approached have turned him down. As many bloggers have pointed out, isn't that his job? Or the Secretary of Defense? For a guy who complains about the bureaucracy all the time, Dubya sure does love to create it.

Media Matters for America has a timeline of the decline and fall of Don Imus. It took seven days. I think the timeline shortchanges the impact of the Rutgers women's basketball press conference. They made a powerful statement.

BoingBoing has some good links to audio and video of the late Kurt Vonnegut.

Too Dumb To Get His Lies Straight

MSNBC: Gonzales Crams for a Senate Grilling

At a recent "prep" for a prospective Sunday talk-show interview, Gonzales's performance was so poor that top aides scrapped any live appearances. During the March 23 session in the A.G.'s conference room, Gonzales was grilled by a team of top aides and advisers—including former Republican National Committee chair Ed Gillespie and former White House lawyer Tim Flanigan—about what he knew about the plan to fire seven U.S. attorneys last fall. But Gonzales kept contradicting himself and "getting his timeline confused," said one participant who asked not to be identified (So Easter.)talking about a private meeting. His advisers finally got "exasperated" with him, the source added.

And this guy is the highest law enforcement officer in the land? His holding such a high office is just a further humiliation of the United States in the eyes of the world. But at least George W. Bush could snap his towel at Abu and call him names (nickname Fredo). He's so dumb he made Georgie feel smart.

I saw this on TalkingPointsMemo, the source for all things Purgative.

Speaking of how dumb the guy who appointed DummyGonzales is, did you see this story?

The CEO of Ford Motor Company stopped George The Lesser from plugging a live extension cord into the hydrogen tank of a hybrid vehicle (which would have a caused an explosion and immolated Curious George). He grabbed the commander in chief's arm and directed him to the front of the vehicle so this photograph could be taken:


Our President. What a maroon.

Good Friday News Dump

Monica Goodling at a Regent Law School picnic
MSNBC reporting that Abu Gonzales aide Monica Goodling to resign -- tomorrow. Probably busy with some Good Friday reenactment today.

Goodling, graduate of the famed Pat Robertson law school Regent, has asserted Fifth Amendment rights to avoid testifying before Congress. Neither the Fifth Amendment nor this resignation will take the focus off the Bush Administration's relentless politicizing of the Justice Department.

Just today we learn that Rachel K. Paulose, the new US Attorney for the District of Minnesota, was BFF with Monica Goodling. Maybe that's why a 33-year-old with minimal legal experience (here's her resume, pdf doc, page 11) was appointed to this position, after the former US Attorney mysteriously resigned without explanation. And before she was appointed she was -- wait, wait -- a senior aide to none other than Abu Gonzales. Today the four most senior members of Paulose's office resigned en masse from their supervisory positions, bumping down to regular trial attorneys in protest of her management style.

Four of her top staff voluntarily demoted themselves Thursday, fed up with Paulose, who, after just months on the job, has earned a reputation for quoting Bible verses and dressing down underlings.

A Bible-quoting bitch. Must have been a real treat to work with.

Then there are the other US attorneys. Not the ones who got purged; not the young Christian zealots who replaced them. No, I'm speaking of the 85 or so US attorneys who kept their jobs. The ones who went along with the Bush Administration's demands for bogus voting rights cases. The ones who investigated Democrats, not Republicans. Like the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, U.S. Attorney Steven M. Biskupic, who brought a bogus case against a state purchasing supervisor (a woman) for steering a state travel contract to a political contributor of the Democratic governor. The Republican candidate for governor in 2006 hammered away on this case in political ads. (Fortunately for the citizens of the state of Wisconsin, the Democrat won anyway.)

And yes, this was a certifiably bogus case. Yesterday the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals heard the case and set the poor woman free. That's almost unheard of in appeals cases. On the very day they heard the arguments they issued their opinion that she was innocent. The three-judge panel ordered her set free immediately. The Seventh Circuit is no land of liberals. It's a strongly right-leaning circuit. And they found this case thin as tissue.

The Carpetbagger Report lists other US Attorneys who may have been bringing political hitjob cases for the Bush Administration.

The incompetence, the cronyism, and the corruption are now joined by the criminality of using the impartial justice system for partisan, political ends.

Blogtopia* RoundUp, Wednesday April 4, 2007

US Vice President Dick Cheney watches as US President George W. Bush speaks on the "Iraq war supplemental" in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, DC. Cheney warned Monday the United States faced defeat in Iraq if Democrats succeed in imposing withdrawal.(AFP/Tim Sloan)
President Cheney-Hiding-In-Bushes appoints Swift Boat funder Ambassador to Belgium with a recess appointment, as well as a bunch of other rightwing fruitcakes who are unconfirmable. dailykos

New Hampshire House passes a civil unions bill to give same-sex couples the same rights as married couples. Towleroad

Did Purgegate discriminate against New Mexico US Attorney David Iglesias because of his military reserve obligations? One of the reasons given for his firing was spending too much time away from the office. (Tee hee -- that wasn't even the real reason! He wasn't a loyal Bushie! Karma's a bitch.) A federal watchdog agency is investigating. ThinkProgress

Bloggers have fun with Photoshop: Dependable Renegade, John McCain Visits Portland, Maine, Lower Manhattanite, Charlatan (on Steve Gilliard's News Blog), Art Pottery, Politics and Food, The Vice Petulant in the Bushes

*yes, skippy coined that phrase!


DDP

Tens or thousands of visitors would wear any baby bear out.


More Knut photos at der Spiegel.

Gonzo's Deputy Testifying Now

You can watch Kyle Sampson's testimony on C-SPAN3 live, or later.

He has already testified that Gonzo lied (or in his weaselly words, "was inaccurate") when he said he wasn't involved in the process.