Would Rove lie to you...

By Libby

Would he say something that wasn't true? Well -- yeah. I've had this song rolling in my head ever since I read this sorry excuse for journalism in the WaPo this morning. Given this administration's long record of politicizing every single function of government, Rove's absurd allegation that the Democrats forced Bush to bring forward AUMF resolution prior to the 02 elections doesn't even pass the giggle test, yet somehow the WaPo couldn't bring itself to mention the easily obtainable proof that Rove is lying.

This is a publicly available, direct quote from September 19, 2002.

THE PRESIDENT: I am sending suggested language for a resolution. I want -- I've asked for Congress' support to enable the administration to keep the peace. And we look forward to a good, constructive debate in Congress. I appreciate the fact that the leadership recognizes we've got to move before the elections. I appreciate the strong support we're getting from both Republicans and Democrats, and look forward to working with them.

This is so easy that even a mere blogger can do it. Why can't we have a 'professional' media that knows how to google?

Steve Benen has more and I also posted on this at my MSM blog where I've started giving out daily journalistic malpractice awards. Unfortunately, I suppose I'll never run out of nominees.

Ex aides search for their souls

By Libby

The WaPo profiles a few of the major players in the horde of departed White House staffers and although it portrays their remarks as soul-searching, it sounds more like searching for excuses to salve their battered consciences to me.

I'm struck by a couple of points. None seem to grasp the enormity of their betrayal of the American people by propping up the White House's destructive agenda. They couch their insights in terms of relativity rather than reality and point the finger of blame on the others, clinging to the belief they had a good plan that was badly executed. None seem to take real responsibility for their personal hand in the mismanagement.

The other thing that stands out and hadn't really thought about before is how young and inexperienced these people who were entrusted with overseeing world shaking decisions on vital policy. I think of the difference in my understanding of the complexity of being from when I was in my 20s and 30s to my views now and realize the biggest problem with our government today is that there really aren't any adults in charge.

Meanwhile, if like myself, you were wondering what Rove has been up to since he skulked out of town -- well -- he's laughing all the way to the bank.

Rove already has multiple options. While on the phone from Dallas before a meeting on the future Bush library, he excused himself to answer a knock at the hotel door. A package arrived and he ripped it open. "I sign it and suddenly I'm a lot richer," he said with Rovian mirth. What kind of contract, he would not say. It was not a book contract; Bartlett said nearly 20 publishers are competing for Rove's book.

And if anyone is thinking he's really not still intimately involved in the White House machinations, think again.

Rove said his book will be worth it. "It will be vicious and slashing," he promised. He sounded as if he was joking. Sort of. But it's not as if he has gone off the reservation. At the end of the interview, he asked that his quotes be sent to the White House first. "I'm still a cog in the great machine," he explained.

He left so he could operate under the radar and to rebrand himself as more than Bush's boy. Meanwhile, the youngsters who fled find their loyalty to a corrupt administration has earned them an opportunity to make a good living in academia and on the talk circuit. But they sure do miss their GOP issued Blackberrys. You know -- the ones they weren't really illegally conducting government business on.

Paging Dr. Freud

By Libby

How do I interpret this? I had a dream last night that Karl Rove and I were lovers. His bedroom was large, paneled in a rich dark wood. There was a fire crackling in the stone fireplace on the far wall from the foot of the bed, framed by two floor to ceiling windows which abutted long bookcases filled with books.

We were lying in a big, simply styled bed on crisp white sheets and fluffly cream colored blankets. Karl's skin glowed golden in the firelight. I was nestled in his pudgy arms. He was soft and warm with strong hands. Kind of like Fred Thompson. [That was really my exact thought in the dream.]

Jeri Kehn Thompson walked into the room and started screaming at Karl for being with me. He leapt out of bed, confused, looking at me while she told him I was a undercover agent who was there to expose his secrets. He looked at Jeri, laughed in that way he does, and left the room.

I wanted to deny it, but I knew she was right. Instead, I rolled over and wrapped the blanket a little snugger around me. That's all I remember.

I woke up to find my dream lover had penned an op-ed for the National Review. It's hard to choose which of Karl's bon mots to highlight, but I guess this will do.

The outcome in Iraq and Afghanistan will color how history views the president.

History’s concern is with final outcomes, not the missteps or advances of the moment. History will render a favorable verdict if the outcome in the Middle East is similar to what America saw after World War II. ...

If the outcome there is like what happened in Vietnam after America abandoned our allies and the region descended into chaos, violence, and danger, history’s judgment will be harsh. History will see President Bush as right, and the opponents of his policy as mistaken — as George McGovern was in his time.

Beyond his policies and actions, history will take the measure of the man.

What's that even supposed to mean? That history will ignore the death tolls and the destruction when the Middle East miraculously busts out all over in peace and prosperity, which Karl is certain will happen if we just stay there long enough and drop enough bombs?

And how did that withdrawal work out for Vietnam anyway? American involvement in that war lasted 25 years before we finally withdrew our troops. During those years Vietnam more resembled Iraq today than say, Disney World. And when we left, admittedly there was much upheaval and carnage as the various political and military forces readjusted their positions.

But just think, if we had only stayed another 25 years, we could have "won" that war and spared the Vietnamese people this sorry fate. I mean who wouldn't rather dodge napalm and Agent Orange than be stuck working in places like this?

Shame on us "defeatocrats" for wishing to subject the Iraqis to a similar nightmare existence.

Rove Cartoon

By Cernig

I had to share this great cartoon from Morland at the Murdoch-owned London Times.

Rove To Quit

By Cernig

Karl Rove has told the WSJ that he's going to quit at the end of August.

Mr. Rove, who has held a senior post in the White House since President Bush took office in January 2001, told Mr. Gigot he first floated the idea of leaving a year ago. But he delayed his departure as, first, Democrats took Congress, and then as the White House tackled debates on immigration and Iraq, he said. He said he decided to leave after White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten told senior aides that if they stayed past Labor Day they would be obliged to remain through the end of the president's term in January 2009.

"I just think it's time," Mr. Rove said in the interview. "There's always something that can keep you here, and as much as I'd like to be here, I've got to do this for the sake of my family."

The old "for the sake of the family" excuse, for a man who has lived and breathed poltical machinations since his college days, just doesn't ring true for me. I just don't see someone like Rove being able to walk away from it all. And I don't think anyone will be surprised if he resurfaces elsewhere, still involved in the GOP election machine.

It may be a case of ensuring he is an "ex-official" by the time his skeletons in the cupboard are fully exhumed, of course, as has been the case with many another Bush official who has quite "for the good of The Family". It's been a hallmark "fall on your sword" loyalty move for Republican heavyweights this last six years and there have been plenty of indications in various congressional investigations recently that where there's been allegations of wrong-doing - for instance of serious Hatch Act violations - then Rove has been instigator and director.

Or it may be that, as he's returning to Texas, he has his eye on a new Texas Republican dimestore cowboy to promote. There are persistent rumors down here of Gov. Rick Perry positioning himself for a veep run. Personally I think Perry is more ambitious and less aware of his own inadequacies than that and may be looking to emulate another ambitious and inadequate Texan governor.

Prostitutes

By Cernig

Two days ago, Republicans in the Senate successfully blocked a no-confidence vote in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, thus supporting White House claims that the whole Attorney-Gate scandal is a fabrication for political purposes.

Today, Senate committees issued subpoenas to former White House counsel Harriet Miers and former top Karl Rove aide Sara Taylor over their connections to the scandal. The White House has indicated that it will cite executive privilege and refuse to allow those subpoenaed to answer to Congress.

CNN’s legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin reports, “The White House has made clear it will cite executive privilege for conversations that took place within the White House on the U.S. attorney matter, and if the people with those conversations happen to have subsequently left the White House, that doesn’t matter. They’re still going to cite executive privilege, and these people are not going to be allowed to testify anytime soon, it appears, if the White House remains as it has been. … Even if they want to testify.”

It is impossible that those Senate Republicans who blocked Monday's vote didn't know this was coming down the pike. They have thus aligned themselves clearly with a White House that, in Senator Patrick Leahy's words:

cannot have it both ways — it cannot stonewall congressional investigations by refusing to provide documents and witnesses, while claiming nothing improper occurred.

Thus those Republican Senators have revealed themselves as prostitutes for The Party rather than as Servants of The People.

Losing the dream

I am convinced that Medicare and other old-age programs will be solved so that they are in place for my parents' generation. I have a hard time imaging a large union set of twenty and thirty-somethings who want their parents to move in with them at the same time that they are trying to first pay off college and then raise their own kids AND the parents who have finally gotten their kids out of the house giving up that independence. It is this union set that will not mobilize politically to support old-age programs:

The Baby Boomer voters will make sure that they elect people who make sure they can go to the doctor and hospital and pharmacy and nursing home easily and seemingly cheaply. This is why I worry about pretty much everything else.

The obligations that the current system has incurred are immense. USA Today has gone through the federal government books and sees an accrual accounting deficit of roughly 40% of total spending instead of roughly the 8% cash accounting deficit for this fiscal year. The overwhelming majority of these future debts are medical expenses that my generation will be paying into an inefficient and ineffective system full of perverse incentives.


Political Animal is pointing to an interesting study that looks at income mobility and the prospect of intergenerational advancement within American society put together by a fairly interesting coalition of Washington think tanks. The short answer is that the American Dream of being able to do better than your parents and get ahead by dint of hard work, innovative ideas, and a little bit of luck are at best rare events instead of the standard morality tale of traditional American mythology.

My generation's men, myself included, are behind where our fathers were thirty years ago despite being deeper in debt to fund more and more education. We are being priced out of asset accumulation and the ability to save for the future as the social expectation of being a 'respectable' and thus a hire-able member of society has become more expensive. Adam Smith noted this tendency of escalating relative competition two hundred years ago:

By necessaries I understand not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but what ever the customs of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even the lowest order, to be without. A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably, though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-laborer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into, without extreme bad conduct. Custom, in the same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England. (h/t Economist View)

The under-45s are politically less viable as a quasi-unified voting block and also significantly under more stress and economic variability. The expenses of daily life have increased significantly faster than the official inflation ex-inflation CPI numbers as education has increased, housing prices have increased, health-care has increased at rates double, triple and quadruple the rates of general inflation and current debt levels, both private and public have dramatically increased. Choices will have to be made eventually to pay off the debts that we as a society and as individuals have incurred, and those choices will be nasty.

The dominant political bloc in American life will seek to protect their interests. And those interests are to likely to be sure that more of the same continues for as long as they can continue to get a good piece of the pie no matter what the costs are to the rest of the population. I fear this outcome as that would dictate a politics that makes Karl Rove look like a piker at divide and conquer. I also fear the economic consequences as it would necessitate a sell-off of my future option space to pay for mistakes made when I was eating paste.

I am also worried about the increasing dissonance between reality and the greater American narrative. My generation has been told that the future is ours to create, but the debts of the past shackle our ability to experiment and achieve. More of our current and future income will be needed to pay off the past's tequila fueled binges furthing the chronic underinvestment for the future as the future can not vote and the stakeholders of the future, my generation, does not vote consistently enough.

The gulf between internalized expectations and realized outcomes increases on both an individual and generational levels, the conflicts will intensify as the American political game shifts from a non-zero sum, increasing pie problem to a far nastier zero-sum game as every one has much stronger incentives to bugger their neighbors to hold onto their relative and hopefully absolute positions.

Those Elusive Rovian Emails

By Cernig

If you've been following AttorneyGate then you will remember that Karl Rove's lawyer told Congress that a whole bunch of Rove's RNC emails, which are very much of interest to congressional enquiries, had been handed over to U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald when he was investigating the outing of Valerie Plame.

What he "forgot" to mention was that he got them back after Fitzgerald was done with them.

Now Senators Leahy and Spector have written to Rove's lawyer, Robert D. Luskin, saying they want to know if he still has them.

Cue the next installment of "the dog ate my homework".

Gonzales Drops White House In It

By Cernig

Michael Roston at Raw Story caught Gonzales revealing a new Bush 'conversation' over US attorney firings in his congressional testimony today.

Weeks after the White House ruled out the involvement of President George W. Bush in any discussions on the firing of 8 US Attorneys, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said on Thursday morning that the President had discussed the matter with advisers in an October 2006 meeting.

"I've now been made aware of the fact that there was a conversation with the President that basically mentioned the same thing in October of 2006," the Attorney General said while answering a question from Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA).

"The same thing" referred to voter fraud cases in three US Attorneys' districts, which Gonzales earlier acknowledged had been raised by Karl Rove in a meeting "sometime in the Fall of 2006."

Gonzales' statement varied from remarks by White House spokespersons that the President had not been involved in any discussions of firing US Attorneys.

"I have said on the record for several weeks now that there is no indication that the President knew about any of the ongoing discussions over the two years, nor did he see a list or a plan before it was carried out," said White House Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino on March 27, 2006.

Furthermore, in a March 21 press briefing, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow had been asked about a Nov. 15, 2006 e-mail from former Gonzales chief of staff D. Kyle Sampson to former White House Counsel Harriet Miers asking "Who will determine whether this requires the President's attention?"

Snow was then asked "did the President have to sign off on this?" referring to the firing of the Attorneys, to which he responded, "The President has no recollection of this ever being raised with him."

A reporter later clarified, "Just to follow, did you say, again for the record, that the President has no recollection of ever being asked about any of this?"

Snow answered, "Yes, the removal – yes, that is correct."

An aide to Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA), told Raw Story the congressional committee will be investigating the matter further.

So now we know that the Schultzing goes to the very top. Which explains why Gonzales is so confident Bush won't fire him. Gonzales could really drop Bush in it if he no longer had to worry about his job. Murray Waas has the goods on just how hard the White House has worked to keep the sum of their involvement in AttorneyGate out of congressional oversight and just how complicit Gonzales is in making that happen.

The Bush administration has withheld a series of e-mails from Congress showing that senior White House and Justice Department officials worked together to conceal the role of Karl Rove in installing Timothy Griffin, a protégé of Rove's, as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

The withheld records show that D. Kyle Sampson, who was then-chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, consulted with White House officials in drafting two letters to Congress that appear to have misrepresented the circumstances of Griffin's appointment as U.S. attorney and of Rove's role in supporting Griffin.

...Several of the e-mails that the Bush administration is withholding from Congress, as well as papers from the White House counsel's office describing other withheld documents, were made available to National Journal by a senior executive branch official, who said that the administration has inappropriately kept many of them from Congress.

The senior official said that Gonzales, in preparing for testimony before Congress, has personally reviewed the withheld records and has a responsibility to make public any information he has about efforts by his former chief of staff, other department aides, and White House officials to conceal Rove's role.

"If [Gonzales] didn't know everything that was going on when it went down, that is one thing," this official said. "But he knows and understands chapter and verse. If there was an effort within Justice and the White House to mislead Congress, it is his duty to disclose that to Congress. As the country's chief law enforcement official, he has a higher duty to disclose than to protect himself or the administration."

I tell you, trying to keep up with Gonzales and AttorneyGate is becoming an impossible task unless it's all you're going to write about. That can of worms just keeps expanding. Thank the Gods for Josh Marshall and the TPM crew.

Interesting --- 2004 Ohio Votes

Cactus at Angry Bear is pointing out an interesting post from Slashdot that deserves some serious follow-up to verify whether or not its central allegation is true.

Netcraft is showing that an event happened in the Ohio 2004 election that is difficult to explain. The Secretary of State's website, which handles election reporting, normally is directed to an Ohio-based IP address hosted by the Ohio Supercomputer Center. On Nov. 3 2004, Netcraft shows the website pointing out of state to a server owned by Smartech Corp. According to the American Registry on Internet Numbers, Smartech's block of IP addresses 64.203.96.0 – 64.203.111.255 encompasses the entire range of addresses owned by the Republican National Committee. Smartech hosted the recently notorious gwb43.com domain used from the White House in apparent violation of the Presidential Records Act, from which thousands of White House emails vanished. Can anyone suggest a good explanations for this seemingly dubious election-eve transfer?

Interesting... very very interesting

White House Wants To See RNC Emails First

By Cernig

The White House is demanding that they vet RNC emails before they are turned over to Congress, according to TPM Muckraker.

The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), wants to get its hands on those RNC-issued email accounts used by Karl Rove and other White House personnel. Congressional investigators want to know about Rove's and his deputy's involvement in the U.S. attorney firings. But the White House insists that it review the emails first, before handing anything over to Democrats. Last week, Conyers warned the RNC not to do that, saying that it would be "an unjustified delay" and "potentially... an obstruction of our investigation."

And today, in a letter to the RNC, the White House made their position clear: you have to give them to us first. There "exists a clear and indisputable Executive Branch interest" in the emails on the RNC-issued accounts, wrote Emmet Flood, Special Counsel to the President.

There's an obvious point to be made - if you wanted to claim "executive" privilege interest" (and where's the basis for that in law?) then you shouldn't have circumvented White House records procedures by going outside the government system in the first place. The RNC is not an integral part of the White House or of federal government no matter how much you may wish it so.

But this one is going to end up with the Supremes, I just know it.

I have become uncomfortably numb

By Libby

Some days I just can't take it anymore. This whole occupation has become such a nightmare. I just want to wake up and find out it was really just a bad dream. Bush isn't really president. Cheney was never born. Karl Rove is just a stray scrap of unresolved inner conflict that haunts my sleep. But it's all too horrible and real and I tire of trying to make sense of the senseless.

The surge was sold as a temporary burst of manpower to bring security to the city of Baghdad. But it's not a surge, it's a trickle. No, it's not even a trickle. It's just a trick. A sleight of hand, shuffling the troops like playing cards pulled from a magician's sleeve. Deployments are extended. Sign up for the Air Force at home, but end up in the Army doing convoy duty in Iraq.

The anniversary march last week that the wingnuts dismissed and the press reported as in the thousands was really eight miles long. There were a million Iraqis who put aside their tribal loyalties and carried only their national flag, shouting "Yankee go Home." It was Sadr's rally but Sunnis headed the march. In the end, Sadr and Sistani may well unite the Sunni and Shia under the umbrella of nationalism and take the prize we fought to win right out of our hands.

And the people just keep on dying. Every day, a new round of death but the accounts never differ. I find myself checking the date to be certain I'm not reading last week's news. I can't even comprehend the numbers anymore. Call me a defeatist, because today I feel defeated by the enormity of the problem to the point of insensibility. I just want it to be over.

Gonzales - Don't Blame Me, I'm Incompetent

By Cernig

Following on from Alberto Gonzales' op-ed in the Washington Post today, TPM Muckraker has posted the relevant sections of his written statement for Tuesday's hearing, which was provided today to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In summary, Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy writes that the testimony will amount to a simple admission that he had no idea what was really going on. "Gonzales was basically out of the loop on who would be fired and why. Gonzales told Sampson to make up a list, and Gonzales approved Sampson's list a year or two later without asking about or getting into the details."

So Gonzales will throw already-resigned scapegoat Sampson under a bus as the real culptrit (at the DoJ at least) while describing himself as an idiot for thinking Sampson would do a competent job without becoming Rove's patsy and for later taking Sampson's word as good enough without adequately reviewing Sampson's work. A manager as awful as Gonzales admits himself to be should be fired if he won't resign - his only possible plus point being that this managerial awfullness appears to be exactly what Rove was counting on.

Marty Lederman gets to the real root of the matter.

It is increasingly plain that he didn't act for much of a reason at all, other than that he was presented with a list of names that had already been cleared with Karl Rove and Harriet Miers. His previous statements that he was more-or-less out of the loop, in other words, are likely to be basically accurate. He didn't fundamentally mislead Congress. His role in this imbroglio was as the rubber-stamper.

...this was a White House -- not a DOJ -- initiative, and its function was to remove U.S. Attorneys who were not acceptable to the President and his advisers. It makes sense, in that light, that Kyle Sampson would work closely with the White House on the process, and that the Attorney General would be inclined to go along with the White House's final decisions if he were satsified that there was a solid basis for them. So far, so good -- and it wouldn't be terribly out of the ordinary, either, except that it's increasingly clear that this was part of a much more extensive Rovian White House operation to use the mechanisms of government to skew elections to Republicans...[via] the elaborate fiction of widespread "voter fraud," which has not only been the predicate for the enactment of numerous disenfranchising voter ID laws, and the pretext for stopping much-needed voter-registration reforms, but has also resulted in in terrorem prosecutions by the Department of Justice on trivial or trumped-up charges.

...the real action on the "merits" was not at DOJ, but in the White House, where the process was initiated by Karl Rove and where the final decision was made by the President. Thus, the current focus on the Attorney General is something of a distraction, at least insofar as Congress's objective is to determine whether anything unlawful or unconstitutional was involved in the U.S. Attorney dismissals. Congress cannot determine whether the removals were made for improper reasons unless it discovers what Rove and Miers advised the President, and why they did so. But the evidence that would bear on that is precisely the sorts of internal White House deliberations that Fred Fielding would put off-limits to Congress -- or that have magically disappeared from RNC databases.

Update Josh Marshall wants you to pay attention to this - "the available evidence now points strongly to the conclusion that the final decision to fire David Iglesias came from the President of the United States."

Is Karl Rove Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?

By Cernig

Karl Rove, via his lawyer, has changed his excuse from "the dog ate my homework" to "I thought someone else had already handed in my homework for me".

Via Raw Story:

On Friday, Rove's attorney "dismissed the notion that President Bush's chief political adviser intentionally deleted his own e-mails from a Republican-sponsored server, saying Rove believed the communications were being preserved in accordance with the law," the Associated Press reports.

According to attorney Robert Luskin, Rove was under the "understanding" that all of his emails had already been archived by Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating the CIA leak case, who had subpoenaed them.

"His understanding starting very, very early in the administration was that those e-mails were being archived," Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said.

Laurie Kellman reports for the AP, "The prosecutor probing the Valerie Plame spy case saw and copied all of Rove's e-mails from his various accounts after searching Rove's laptop, his home computer, and the handheld computer devices he used for both the White House and Republican National Committee, Luskin said. The prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, subpoenaed the e-mails from the White House, the RNC and Bush's re-election campaign, he added."

"There's never been any suggestion that Fitzgerald had anything less than a complete record," Luskin told the AP.

So now the reason for his breaking White House policy is that he thought someone else was keeping that policy for him? Even a fifth-grader would know that to try such a feeble excuse is just going to provoke the adults into looking harder for the real reason. For Karl, who has always been recognised as a smart cookie by enemy and ally alike, to try such an excuse shows how nervous he is about the real truth.

Emails lost in space

I've thought from early on in the attorney purge scandal that it would become the key to opening the door to wider White House corruption and I see no evidence that I was mistaken. Nobody is even talking about the attorneys anymore in light of the emergence of the fascinating case of the disappearing emails. Emails that only became important because the purge scandal brought the routine use of outside email accounts in conducting White House business to light.

It now appears that millions of emails that should have been legally kept, have been routinely purged by the RNC because they were sent through RNC provided accounts, on RNC provided equipment. Whether or not the whole cozy set-up was installed to comply with the Hatch Act, it's painfully clear that it was utilized in direct violation of the Presidential Records Act.

I'm sure you'll be shocked to learn the biggest violator was Karl Rove. It's been widely reported that he conducted 95% of his email correspondence via the RNC servers. Putting a hold on his account didn't seem to do much to preserve the records under the PRA.

...the RNC does not have any e-mails prior to 2005 for Mr. Rove. Mr. Kelner did not give any explanation for the e-mails missing from Mr. Rove's account, but he did acknowledge that one possible explanation is that Mr. Rove personally deleted his e-mails from the RNC server.

This brings to mind, the April Fools "joke." I was one of the bloggers who got punk'd on the photo. I thought at the time, and I still do, the alleged joke was designed to shift the focus from Bush and Rove's visit to the fair city of Chattanooga, where the main servers for the RNC accounts are thought to be kept. I'm still wondering about the purpose of that visit. I find it as odd a coincidence as all the other key evidence this administration seems to lose on a regular basis.

But that aside, some 50 White House insiders have regularly been conducting the people's business in clear violation of the PRA. Leahy should subpoena the records immediately and every server and router that has carried the email should be seized and subjected to forensic examination to retreive what has been "lost."

Justice is pleading laxity and confusion for its failure to conform to the proper protocols. The only thing I can see that is confusing, are their excuses for breaking the law.

How To Avoid Being A Purged US Attorney

BuzzFlash is flagging up a Milwaukee court case as a possible example of what can happen when a US Attorney bows to the same kind of political pressure the sacked ASA's in the ongoing PurgeGate scandal were likely fired for ignoring.

Steve Biskupic, the U.S. attorney for Milwaukee, indicted and convicted a Wisconsin state purchasing supervisor named Georgia Thompson for improperly awarding a contract to a firm linked to Democratic Governor Jim Doyle's 2006 reelection campaign.

The only problem is that Biskupic never proved that Thompson ever knew about the relationship, which included completely legal donations. Thompson - appointed by Gov. Doyle's Republican predecessor - has never even met Doyle and is not alleged to have sought any personal gain since she was already at the highest civil service pay scale. The winning bid and the runner-up were statistically tied on the seven-member commission's rating scale, but the winner was legitimately chosen because it was $30,000 cheaper and came from in-state.

But an election was coming up, and the allegations proved a great way to attack the Democratic incumbent. Doyle said Republican officials spent "millions of dollars" running ads that turned Thompson into a symbol of corruption in his administration. Caught in the middle was Georgia Thompson, who, her lawyer said, lost "her job, her life savings, her home and her liberty." She was ordered to prison for 18 months by conservative District Judge Rudolf Randa (a member of the Federalist Society) without letting her remain free pending appeal because he had "no real reason to expect her conviction to be reversed."

Fortunately, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals had another idea. Two of the three judges hearing the case were appointed by Republicans, but they each blasted the government's arguments relentlessly, at one point calling them "beyond thin." Oral arguments lasted just 26 minutes, after which they immediately ordered Thompson's release from federal prison. Normally, such reversals take weeks or months and often result only in new hearings.

"It's extraordinary for a U.S. Court of Appeals to issue a decision on the day of oral arguments without a written opinion," said Thompson's lawyer.

The USA in question didn't even show up for the Appeals hearing, sending a staffer in his place. Local Milwaukee wisdom has it that Biskupic was on the Rovian hit-list for not being "tough" enough on the GOP’s bogus "voter fraud" agenda and got himself off the list by handing the Republicans an opportunity to smear their rival by proxy and wreck an innocent woman's life in the process. In which case, neither he nor the GOP care that the case was thrown out - it had done its job. As local blogger Mike Plaisted writes:

The Georgia Thompson case will forever point up the key fact driving Gonzo-Gate – U.S. Attorneys have extraordinary power to investigate, arrest, charge, prosecute and convict. Their appointments are, by nature, political. But the exercise of their duties should not be. Biskupic has prosecuted a lot of Democrats and not one Republican. He has always been a willing bagman for Karl Rove and the state and national GOP. If anyone in the current U.S. attorney corps needs to be relieved of his duties, it is Steve Biskupic.

Yep. But it begs the obvious question. How many more cases are there out there? Let's have this guy in front of the Senate hearings under subpoena and find out what he knows.

Special Counsel To Investigate Attorney's Firing

According to fired US Attorney , David Iglesias, the Office of Special Counsel, which protects federal government whistleblowers has begun an enquiry into whether his dismissal, and that of other US Attorneys, violated federal laws.

Justice Department officials have said they added Iglesias to the list of prosecutors to be dismissed because his supervisors deemed him an ``absentee landlord,'' who delegated too much authority to his second-in-command. Iglesias acknowledges traveling out of New Mexico on U.S. attorney business and that he has spent some 40 to 45 days a year in his service in the Navy Reserve.

The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act prohibits an employer from denying any benefit of employment on the basis of an individual's military service.

A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately return a call for comment Thursday.

New Mexico Republicans, including Sen. Pete Domenici, complained to White House and Justice Department officials that Iglesias moved too slowly on voter fraud and political corruption cases.

Iglesias says he was fired for resisting pressure from Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., to rush indictments in an investigation of an alleged kickback scheme involving Democrats. Domenici and Wilson acknowledge calling Iglesias in October before the 2006 election, but they say they did not pressure him.

Iglesias said his discussions with the Special Counsel's staff includes questions about whether the pressure from officials to act on voter fraud or corruption cases might violate the Hatch Act, which prohibits civil servants from engaging in partisan political activity.

Iglesias said the Special Counsel also is looking into whether he might have a claim under whistleblower protection laws, even though he was dismiseed two months before he publicly discussed the calls he received from Wilson and Domenici. Iglesias said the details are still being researched.

Heh. If they stick with the absentee-landord thing, he gets them on a violation of the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act and if they admit it was because of Domenici's pressure, he gets them on the Hatch Act. I bet Gonzales and crew are regretting firing such a bright spark.

Update TPM's Justin Rood, now over at ABC's "The Blotter", has revealed that yet another Bush administration official is facing investigation, this time for what looks like a clear breach of the Hatch Act:

The Office of Special Counsel confirmed to ABC News it has launched an investigation into General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan, probing concerns she may have violated a ban against conducting partisan political activity at government expense by participating in a meeting featuring a presentation by a White House political aide on GOP election strategy.

Doan's agency spends over $56 billion a year on paper clips, office space, car fleets and other necessities for federal agencies.

In January, Doan attended a meeting at which senior White House political aide W. Scott Jennings briefed Doan, a White House appointee, and other officials at a GSA facility on Republican plans to win seats in Congress.

After the presentation, according to some witnesses contacted by congressional investigators, Doan encouraged other attendees to find ways GSA could help "our candidates" in the 2008 election. Doan has told Congress she doesn't recall making the statement, and other witnesses interviewed by congressional investigators are said to have backed her up.

Rood also reveals that Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman have been holding breifings just like this one in just about every government department since 2002. So watch out for more investigations and eventual indictments of other Bush officials for Hatch Act violations.

House Approves Subpoenas For Rove, Miers

Here we go.

WASHINGTON (AP) - A House panel on Wednesday approved subpoenas for President Bush's political adviser, Karl Rove and other top White House aides, setting up a constitutional showdown over the firings of eight federal prosecutors.

By voice vote, but with some ``no'' votes heard, the House Judiciary subcommittee on commercial and administrative law decided to compel the president's top aides to testify publicly and under oath about their roles in the firings.

The White House has refused to budge in the controversy, standing by embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and insisting that the firings were appropriate. White House spokesman Tony Snow said that in offering aides to talk to the committees privately, Bush had sought to avoid the ``media spectacle'' that would result from public hearings with Rove and others at the witness table.

So we're set up for a Supreme Court showdown where Bush will invoke "executive privilege" in an attempt to enshrine forever the Nixonian notion that the incumbent of the White House gets a free ride from oversight.

The Carpetbagger looks at the strength of Bush's claims:

How strong is the executive privilege claim in this case? Not very. For one thing, the scandal has nothing to do with “military, diplomatic or national security secrets,” where the Supreme Court says executive privilege is strongest. For another, the Bush administration has already disclosed thousands of pages of documents on the subject, and in some cases, partial disclosure can waive the privilege.

And from a purely political perspective, it hardly helps the White House that the Bush gang used to have an entirely different opinion of executive privilege when Clinton was in office.

Consider this gem from Tony Snow in 1998, which Glenn Greenwald uncovered:

Evidently, Mr. Clinton wants to shield virtually any communications that take place within the White House compound on the theory that all such talk contributes in some way, shape or form to the continuing success and harmony of an administration. Taken to its logical extreme, that position would make it impossible for citizens to hold a chief executive accountable for anything. He would have a constitutional right to cover up.

Chances are that the courts will hurl such a claim out, but it will take time.

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.

Yet it seems to me that the White House has expected this confrontation for some time even if they didn't expect this to be the issue that provoked it. And they seem to relish the possibility. Are they that sure of the Supreme Court already?

Update I have to say, I think House Dems are framing this exactly right. Rahm Emmanuel said today that: "The White House says they have nothing to hide, but evidently, they are willing to speak only behind closed doors, but not under oath," ... "Our goal is to finally get to the truth, but not to create a confrontation."

Which sets out the truth - that all the underhanded actions and confrontational attitudes are over at the White House.

And Linda Sánchez says that while Congress respects White House wishes to be able to debate internally without restrictions, that shouldn't be a "get out of jail free card". I think we should be hearing that phrase far more in the near future.

Bush Is The New Nixon

The stage is now set for a full-blown constitutional crisis, one which has been deliberately created by the Bush administration in order to force, once and for all, A Nixonian idea of the power of the Oval Office into the constitutional framework.

Aquiescence to Bush's "reasonable" offer would instantly accord congressional acceptance to that Nixonian ideal, but Bush is also betting that a Supreme Court with his nominees in charge will back him should push come to shove. Bush is daring both Congress and Court to try to stop him.
The New York Times Editorial today sets out the reasons why he should not succeed in his power-grab, on this issue especially.

Mr. Bush’s proposal was a formula for hiding the truth, and for protecting the president and his staff from a legitimate inquiry by Congress. Mr. Bush’s idea of openness involved sending White House officials to Congress to answer
questions in private, without taking any oath, making a transcript or allowing any follow-up appearances. The people, in other words, would be kept in the dark.

The Democratic leaders were right to reject the offer, despite Mr. Bush’s threat to turn this dispute into a full-blown constitutional confrontation.

Congress has the right and the duty to fully investigate the firings, which may have been illegal, and Justice Department officials’ statements to Congress, which may have been untrue. It needs to question Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s chief political adviser, Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, and other top officials.

It is hard to imagine what, besides evading responsibility, the White House had in mind. Why would anyone refuse to take an oath on a matter like this, unless he were not fully committed to telling the truth? And why would Congress accept that idea, especially in an investigation that has already been marked by repeated false and misleading statements from administration officials?

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.

The White House also put an unacceptable condition on the documents it would make available, by excluding e-mail messages within the White House. Mr. Bush’s overall strategy seems clear: to stop Congress from learning what went on within the White House, which may well be where the key decisions to fire the attorneys were made.

The White House argued that presidential advisers rarely testify before Congress, but that is simply not true. Many of President Clinton’s high-ranking advisers, including his White House counsels and deputy chief of staff, testified about Whitewater, allegations of campaign finance abuses and other matters.

The Bush administration is trying to hide behind the doctrine of “executive privilege.” That term does not appear in the Constitution; the best Mr. Bush could do yesterday was a stammering reference to the separate branches of government. When presidents have tried to invoke this privilege, the courts have been skeptical. President Richard Nixon tried to withhold the Watergate tapes, but a unanimous Supreme Court ruled against him.

It is no great surprise that top officials of this administration believe they do not need to testify before Congress. This is an administration that has shown over and over that it does not believe that the laws apply to it, and that it does not respect its co-equal branches of government. Congress should subpoena Mr. Rove and the others, and question them under oath, in public. If Congress has more questions, they should be recalled.

That would not be “partisanship,” as Mr. Bush wants Americans to believe. It would be Congress doing its job by holding the president and his team accountable — a rare thing in the last six years.

It would also be Congress doing its job by ensuring that the White House does not succeed in its attempt to bulldozer lawmakers into accepting a de facto change to the US constitution which would permanently alter the careful balance of power set up by the founders.

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Playing Constitutional Crisis "Dare and Double Dare"

It seems obvious to me that the Democrats and Bush are now involved in a game of "Dare and Double dare" over the ongoing AttorneyGate scandal which will, one way or another, lead to a constitutional crisis of sorts. At stake are the entangled questions of "executive privilege", the ability of Congress to exercize oversight and, finally, the Bush meme of the presidency in times of war being an elected monarchy.

The first "dare" came this morning, when House Democrats announced their intention to hold a meeting tomorrow on whether to subpoena Karl Rove, Harriet Miers and other White House staff intimately involved in the firings of US attorneys. Had the White House simply said nothing and allowed those subpoenas to be issued, Bush would have been on the back foot - there is, rightly or wrongly, a notion that a public official who has been subpoenaed by a hostile committee is a probably guilty of something.

However, had the White House refused point-blank at that stage, then it would have been rightly seen as an attempt to shield those staffers and the Bush administration from scrutiny - something the administration has in fact wanted all along - and would have provoked a constitutional crisis over what is seen as an overly secretive and cronyist presidency refusing Congressional oversight. It would have meant a final confrontation over the Imperial Presidency, but on terms and in a way that did not favor Bush.

So the White House made its "double dare," offering to allow Rove, Miers and others to testify but on terms that even the cheerleaders at NRO knew would be unacceptable. NRO published the relevant part of the White House offer under the headline "White House to Congress: OK, We'll Testify, But..."

In response to the invitations for interviews extended by the Committees, I am prepared to agree to make available for interviews the President's former Counsel; current Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor; Deputy Counsel; and a Special Assistant in the Office of Political Affairs. We are prepared to agree to the following terms, which, considering applicable constitutional principles relating to the Presidency and your Committees' interests, we believe are fair, reasonable, and respectful. We believe that such interviews should be a last resort, and should be conducted, if needed, only after Congress has heard from Department of Justice officials about the decision to request the resignations of the U.S. Attorneys.

Such interviews may cover, and would be limited to, and subject of (a) communications between the White House and persons outside the White House concerning the request for resignations of the U.S. Attorneys in question; and (b) communications between the White House and Members of Congress concerning those requests. Those interviews should be conducted by both Committees jointly. Questioning of White House officials would be conducted by a Member or limited number of Members, who would be accompanied by committee staff. Such interviews would be private and conducted without the need for an oath, transcript, subsequent testimony, or the subsequent issuance of subpoenas. A representative of the Office of the Counsel to the President would attend these interviews and personal counsel to the invited officials may be present at their election.(All Emphasis Mine - C)

There was only one possible response to such blatant power-grabbing and the Congress made it - saying that the White House's offer was designed to sidestep accountability - unrecorded testimony which isn't under oath being about as trustworthy as writing on a restroom wall - and enacting a measure by a massive majority that removed the White House's ability to hire and fire US Attorneys without congressional oversight. If you like, at this stage it was "double double dare".

Finally Bush himself responded by issuing what amounted to a "double dog dare" challenge.

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush warned Democrats Tuesday to accept his offer to allow top aides to testify about the firings of federal prosecutors only privately and not under oath, or risk a constitutional showdown from which he would not back down.

"We will not go along with a partisan fishing expedition aimed at honorable public servants," Bush said in a statement from the White House. "I proposed a reasonable way to avoid an impasse."

He added: "There's no indication ... that anybody did anything improper."

Which is, even on the face of it, laughable. The whole purpose of congressional oversight is to establish whether anybody did anything improper or whether in fact White House staff are "honorable public servants". But they cannot possibly establish these things if the people involved and those around them cannot be held accountable under oath and on the record. Yet the opening was created for this gambit by the original spurious offer, which Bush can now say was "reasonable" even when it clearly wasn't by any standrads of governmental accountability and transparency.

Glenn Greenwald is at his perceptive best on what is being said by the White House:

The President intends to invoke "executive privilege," the same doctrine used by Presidents Nixon and Clinton in their respective (unsuccessful) attempts to resist subpoenas:

First, the President began his Press Conference by admitting that the administration's explanations as to what happened here have been -- to use his own words -- "confusing" and "incomplete." Why, then, would Congress possibly trust Bush officials to provide more explanations in an off-the-record, no-transcript setting where there was no legal obligation to tell the truth?

Once a party demonstrates a propensity to issue false explanations and refuses to tell the truth voluntarily, no rational person would trust that party to make voluntary disclosures. One could trust (if at all) only on-the-record testimony, under oath, where there are criminal penalties for lying (if they have questions about that motivation, they can ask Lewis Libby).

[But], it is crystal clear (just as it was when Bill Clinton sought to invoke "executive privilege" to resist Grand Jury subpoenas to his aides -- Sidney Blumenthal, Bruce Lindsay and Hillary -- in the Lewinsky investigation) that the narrowly-construed doctrine of executive privilege does not entitle the President to shield the communications here from compelled disclosure.

...Bush followers are gearing up to solemnly lecture us all on how profoundly vital "executive privilege" is and how terrible it is that Democrats are trying to invade it by demanding that political advisor Karl Rove and Harriet Miers testify under oath. But that, of course, is not what they were saying -- at all -- when Clinton attempted to use that doctrine to prevent the compelled testimony of his aides.

Glenn notes that the U.S. Supreme Court in U.S. v. Nixon (1974) rejected Nixon's invocation of executive privilege to resist a Grand Jury Subpoena for the Watergate tapes on the basis that "absent a claim of need to protect military, diplomatic, or sensitive national security secrets" executive privilege was not a valid excuse to sidestep scrutiny. There's certainly no such claim being made here....yet. But watch for the argument that allowing congressional "interference" in internal White House matters would inevitably weaken the presidency and thus the nation during the current "war on terror." You know it's coming. The Presidents fabled war powers end up being the excuse for everything.

The White House believes that "constitutional principles" determine that what goes on in the White House should stay in the White House, regardless of nature, and that Congress has no right to meddle, enquire, scrutinize or even wonder aloud about it. It also thinks that Congress has no right to legally compel testimony on matters inside the White House, despite precedent to the contrary. (It thinks the same holds true for the Supreme Court too, by the way, as we are quite likely to find out direct from the horse's mouth in the near future.)

Of course, the current Congress was always going to differ on that. I would like to hope that even a Republican majority wouldn't be happy with a White House which basically declared itself free of oversight and succeeded from the American model of mutually interconnected and limiting "three branches of government" in such a blatant manner.

Bush's "double dog dare" effectively says "see you in court". At which time the White House will doubtless deny that the court has any more business poking its nose into White House doings, which are "perfectly proper" because the White House says they are, than Congress has.

That's when there will be a real constitutional crisis.But the White House has carefully acted in such a way as to claim that the crisis would be someone else's fault.

(So what else is new?)