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Tuesday - April 17, 2007Unmitigated gallThe White House is claiming that it has the right to screen the emails on RNC computers before they are handed to Congress: [T]oday, 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 is an one obvious and one not so obvious flaw in the "reasoning" behind this claim of executive privilege. The obvious flaw is that, by definition, email on an RNC server is not properly Executive Branch business. Any executive branch business on those emails is not just evidence of a crime, it is a crime, since it violates the Hatch Act. Less obvious is the incredible extent to which the White House is trying to stretch the concept of executive privilege. Nixon tried to use it to shield the plotting that took place in the Oval Office, but to the best of my knowledge and recollection, he never tried to stretch it to include all communications between executive branch employees. How far down, one must wonder, does this go? Can he claim executive privilege for emails between any two federal employees? It is an unfortunate fact that both Congress and the courts are slow moving institutions. The executive is light on its feet, by design. Almost any lawyer can tell you that it's ever so easy for an unprincipled litigant to gum up the court system for years. The courts simply don't know how to deal with people who don't have a fundamental respect for playing by the rules. Still, sooner or later (unless our courts have truly been totally corrupted, in which case all is lost) the mills of the courts, like those of the gods, grind exceeding small. Congress has only two tools at its disposal: public opinion and the courts. It should get in to a court with this issue right now. Friday - April 13, 2007Amateur liars and war czarsWatching White House Spokesperson Dana Perino
makes you realize what a pro Tony Snow was. This poor woman seems almost-dare I
say it?...embarrassed when she lies. Where did they get such an amateur? I
realize it must be hard to get a general to step in to be Bush's War Czar and
take the blame for the war, but how hard can it be to get a flack to handle the
White House Press Corps. After all, as Hamlet says, "It's easy as lying". Poor
Dana just can't seem to pull it off. Check out the You tube videos here and
here.
Even hapless Scott McClellan was better than Dana. In case you missed the story on the War Czar, the Daily Show covered it well: Colbert makes another point: Friday - April 13, 2007U.S. Attorney saves job by putting innocent woman in jail?More evidence, if any were needed, that the real
story in the U.S. Attorney scandal may be the U.S. Attorneys that weren't fired;
those like Steven Biskupic from Wisconsin. He's the prosecutor who brought a
"beyond thin" case against a hapless civil servant. It now turns out that he was
on a White House hit list, but apparently worked his way off it somehow.
Coincidence? In this Administration there are no coincidences. If it looks bad
it's because it is. Here's
the story:
A U.S. attorney in Wisconsin who prosecuted a state Democratic official on corruption charges during last year's heated governor's race was once targeted for firing by the Department of Justice, but given a reprieve for reasons that remain unclear. A federal appeals court last week threw out the conviction of Wisconsin state worker Georgia Thompson, saying the evidence was "beyond thin." Congressional investigators looking into the firings of eight U.S. attorneys saw Wisconsin prosecutor Steven M. Biskupic's name on a list of lawyers targeted for removal when they were inspecting a Justice Department document not yet made public, according to an attorney for a lawmaker involved in the investigation. The attorney asked for anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the investigation. It wasn't clear when Biskupic was added to a Justice Department hit list of prosecutors, or when he was taken off, or whether those developments were connected to the just-overturned corruption case. By the way, this story is from the McClachey News Service, which is doing superior work on this story. Wednesday - April 11, 2007ProofFrom the Associated
Press:
The escalating uproar over President Bush's ouster of eight U.S. attorneys has handed Democrats a weapon they have long sought, evidence that his administration improperly allowed politics to trump the law. There are a couple of problems: The evidence is largely circumstantial, and the proof is missing. (Emphasis added) This sent me to my copy of Black's Law Dictionary. Circumstantial evidence: all evidence of indirect nature; direct evidence as to the facts deposed, but indirect as to the fact probandum Proof:The effect of evidence; the establishment of a fact by evidence. In other words, circumstantial evidence is any evidence that allows one to infer that a given fact is true, or a given event happened. I have, for instance, never actually seen the back of my head, but I have good reason to conclude it exists. If you have enough evidence, of any nature, you have proof. Perhaps I can provide an illustration: Attorney: Can you tell the jury what you observed? Witness: I saw a wooden box with a duck in it. Attorney: Isn't it true that you never saw a duck? Witness: But I heard a quacking noise from inside the box. Attorney: So, you don't know that there actually was a duck in that box, do you? Witness: Well, while I was there, a whole bunch of other ducks congregated around the box, and they seemed to be drawn by the quacking noise. Attorney: So you are simply asking the jury to speculate that there was a duck in the box, arent' you? Witness: Well, the box was raised up and it had a screened bottom. There was duck shit underneath, which was confirmed on scientific analysis. Attorney: Would you please answer the question: You never saw a duck, did you? Witness: No I didn't. To be explicit: Circumstantial evidence is evidence, and enough of it is proof, because proof is just a pile of evidence sufficient to convince a trier of fact to a given level of certainty. People have been hung based solely on circumstantial evidence, and a criminal conviction requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt. It follows, as the night the day, that proof is not missing just because the only evidence is curcumstantial. The reporter fails to understand this, something that should be obvious to anyone who performs a little cogitation about the matter. Now, what level of proof do we need to conclude that the Justice Department had been totally politicized? We are talking about citizens making a political judgment, not about jurors. There is no reason that we should withhold judgment until we have seen proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The civil standard is preponderance of the evidence, but I would submit that when the system of justice is at stake, action is necessary when you find probable cause. That standard is easily met here, but I'd say that even the civil standard is met when you combine the facts recited in the story itself: The case of San Diego's former federal prosecutor Carol Lam has attracted particular attention because of the uncanny timing of discussions about her ouster. Lam, who oversaw a bribery case against now-imprisoned Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., had just alerted the Justice Department to new search warrants in that case last May when Gonzales' then top aide contacted the White House about replacing her. The same day, the Los Angeles Times reported that the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles had opened an investigation of GOP Rep. Jerry Lewis that was connected to the Cunningham case. Justice Department documents released last month show Lam landed on a target list long before because of what administration officials have described as her office's lax record on immigration enforcement. They've said they were pleased with Lam's work on the Cunningham case. Arizona's Paul Charlton was ousted amid reports that he was investigating Republican Rep. Jim Kolbe's contacts with underage congressional pages and a land deal by another Republican, Rep. Rick Renzi. New Mexico's former U.S. attorney, David Iglesias, surfaced on the list before the Nov. 7 election, after he was contacted by two Republican members of Congress asking if he would bring indictments in a suspected Democratic kickback scheme before Election Day. The New Mexico lawmakers, Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson, have acknowledged making the calls but denied trying to pressure Iglesias. Gonzales' former top aide, D. Kyle Sampson, told Congress after he resigned over the ousters that the lawmakers' concerns may have played a role in Iglesias' ouster. Justice officials said Iglesias was a poor manager. John McKay, the ousted Seattle prosecutor, had declined to investigate charges of voter fraud in the disputed 2004 gubernatorial election that put Democrat Christine Gregoire in the governor's mansion. McKay has said an aide to Republican Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington called to ask about the investigation. In Nevada, Daniel Bogden was asked to leave as he was reportedly looking into whether Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons had received gifts and money in return for using his influence on congressional intelligence and national security panels when he was in the House. There have been no allegations that political corruption cases were a factor in the ousters of three other prosecutors. ..with the fact that the Justice Department is withholding evidence, giving rise to what we in the law biz call an adverse inference. The foregoing evidence constitutes sufficient proof to compel a conclusion to a reasonable degree of certainty that the Bushies were engaged in improper activities. Add all the other evidence that's come out, and you could easily get an indictment if you happened to run the Justice Department. Just a little thought, by the way, would lead almost anyone to conclude that in a case like this, most of the evidence will be circumstantial. Some elements of a crime must almost always be proven by circumstantial evidence. The element of intent, for instance, can rarely be proved by direct evidence. One more thing: The last statement in the article is true, but misleading. One of the remaining three U.S. Attorneys was the Arkansas U.S. Attorney, who was pushed out to make way for Karl Rove's puppet. Remember, the overriding charge is not that the Justice Department was trying to suppress investigations of Republicans. That's a mere subset of the overall crime. The charge is that the Justice Department was being politicized, converted into an arm of the Republican Party. The charge is proven, to a reasonable degree of certainty. After all, if it quacks like a duck... Monday - April 09, 2007The Enemy Within-Justice Department DivisionI've mentioned before that the larger and more
important aspect of the U.S. Attorney scandal has to do with the U.S. Attorneys
that were not fired, that is, the extent to which some U.S. Attorneys willingly
embraced the marching orders from Washington to politicize our system of
justice. That itself is just a smaller part of the larger story-the
politicization of the Justice Department at all levels. A few related (the dots
connect themselves) developments illustrate the
point:
First, it appears that Monica Goodling's decision to take the Fifth Amendment may have had as much to do with the Bushie's attempt to permanently pervert the Justice Department as it did with the fact that she provided false information to Paul McNulty, which he duly passed along to the Congress. Goodling was deeply involved in Ashcroft, and then Gonzales' attempts to staff critical sections of the Department with fourth rate legal minds from some of our finer fundamentalist law schools, particularly Pat Robertson's Regent University, where Goodling herself was spawned. Naturally you can't stuff the Justice Department full of pasty faced Bible thumping drones without lowering standards just a bit, (affirmative action for the religious right?) but that wasn't a problem for Ashcroft or Gonzales: Monday - April 02, 2007Media busy telling the Dems to keep their hands off the RepublicansYet more media drumbeat warning the Democrats to
go easy on Bush, this time from the Washington Post (reprinted
in this morning's Courant). The article begins by saying that
Democrats will be opening up new fronts against Bush, followed by the obligatory
warning from a Republican who advises the Democrats, for their own good, not to
do it. We then read
this:
The gambit has Republican political operatives gleeful and some Democrats worried. If the Republicans were gleeful, they would not be saying so. They would be sitting back waiting for the Democrats to walk into the trap. It's a funny thing that these articles appear with such regularity. I commented about another last week. While I'm sure there were such articles during the Clinton years warning the Republicans, I would bet you would have to spend a lot of time googling before you could find one. And even when the Republicans were shooting themselves in the foot big time with the impeachment, I don't recall any Democrats being truly gleeful. All the Democrats have to do is pick their targets well. There are a lot of them out there. You could investigate Bush and his henchmen for two years and never get to the bottom of the criminality, and remember, we're talking about real criminality, something they never had on Clinton. Please tell me with a straight face that the Republicans are going to enjoy endless exposures of their abuses of power, corruption and criminality. Alright, maybe they will, assuming we can add masochism to their list of perversions. The Republicans are also warning the Democrats to keep hands off the totalitarian Patriot Act and the Guantanamo prison. Supposedly, the American people will rise up in righteous anger if the Democrats restore the Bill of Rights and curb the budding dictator. I'm not buying that one either. The days of playing the terrorism card are over. People have seen through that. When a supposed dangerous terrorist gets nine months in return for agreeing to keep his mouth shut until after an election (in this case the Australian election) , it's pretty clear that the system is a political farce and a national embarrassment. What's interesting about this article is the subtext. The Democrats appear to have stopped listening to the Republicans and to the beltway pundits .They are starting to understand that you lead by leading. As for Panetta the one cautious Dem actually quoted in the article and one of the reliable naysayers to whom the media always turn, it's time for him to step aside. Oh, I forgot, he has stepped aside. He's a nobody now, whose only ability to be somebody consists in dissing Democrats from the sidelines. Wednesday - March 28, 2007Memory problemsFor a good time, watch GSA Administrator Lurita
Doan try to lie and not lie at the same time. It's the old Watergate "I have no
recollection" defense. Video here,
crueler video here.
These poor stupid Republicans just weren't smart enough to realize that a new day had dawned. In January of 2007, after the election, knowing full well there was a Democratic Congress just waiting to grill people like her, she allowed Karl Rove's people to come to the GSA and break the Hatch Act. According to witnesses, she wondered aloud how the GSA might conspire to keep violating the Hatch Act in service to The Party. That's what they say, anyway. But who knows, she says she can't remember. By the way, she does remember there were cookies on the table. I wonder who paid for those cookies. I assume it's a big no-no if GSA did. You know, I'm getting on in years, and I can appreciate how you can forget things. If you asked me to remember some routine thing that happened to me a mere two months ago, I might not remember either. Of course, even at my advanced age, I do tend to remember things that are a tad out of the ordinary. Now, being a naive type of guy, I would have thought that the obvious impropriety of this sort of thing would have marked the day as special for Ms. Doan, but that presupposes that it was unusual. In Roveworld, maybe it isn't. The cruel Congressman cross examining her apparently didn't think to ask if this sort of thing was routine. If it is, then it's perfectly understandable that she didn't remember what took place in January as opposed to some other month or week. Maybe it really was just another day of corruption at the office. Cast your mind back over the Clinton years- those by-gone years of non-stop special prosecutors and endless Congressional investigations. Can you think of a single [proven] example of a breach of public trust as outrageous as this? I won't accept Monica, private sex acts just don't count. Has something like this actually happened, we would have had another impeachment. But by today's standards, this is just a quaint little side show, a minor theme in a symphony of public corruption. These things are coming so fast and furious that we become overwhelmed and deadened. I wonder if this will even make the network news. Sure as shooting John Stewart or Colbert will pick it up. Monday - March 26, 2007Something to watchAn issue that has been bubbling just beneath the
surface of the US Attorney surface has begun to surface. It
has apparently been confirmed that Karl Rove, along with other White House
criminals, uses an RNC email account for about 95% of his email. Henry
Waxman has noticed, and has suggested to the RNC that it would be a
good idea to make sure that the emails don't disappear. No need to wonder about
Rove's reasons for this arrangement. Assume the worst and you've got it right.
Unfortunately for Karl and his boss, this too clever by half strategy may have some unpleasant unintended consequences, as have so many of the adventures upon which they've embarked. First, there's the matter of the Presidential Records Act, which this conduct may have violated. More importantly, there appears to be a fundamental inconsistency between the use of an email account maintained by a political party and the claim that the user is a government official offering policy advice to the president. In other words, by his own actions Rove may have made it very difficult for his lawyers to argue that he is an official to whom the concept of executive privilege attaches, when he appears to operate predominately in the private, political sphere. Bush will probably argue that he has the unreviewable right to designate the individuals to whom the privilege attaches, thus conferring upon himself, in addition to his Constitutional authority to pardon past transgressions, the right to vest individuals of his choosing from virtual immunity from investigation or prosecution. In most periods of our history this would be a hard judicial sell. Even if there are isolated moments in which Rove functions as a presidential policy advisor, there is no reason to hold that he is therefore subject to a privilege with respect to everything he does, such as, for instance, showing Powerpoint presentations to government employees about how they can help Republican candidates. The RNC emails should, by definition, be fair game, and unless they have been deleted, they promise to be quite interesting reading. The outcome of this constitutional feud will perhaps give us the final word about whether the Bush gang has perverted our constitutional system past the point of redemption. Despite the very weak, almost non-existent legal claim he is making, Bush may win in court. This may all come down to whether or not Justice Kennedy has buyer's remorse about putting the would be dictator into office in the first place. Wednesday - March 21, 2007First as tragedy, then as farceI know I'm not the only one out there who fondly
remembers the days of Watergate. One of the most wonderful things about it was
the fact that, at least to me, it so much resembled a Greek tragedy. The
protagonist, one Tricky Dicky, struggled against his fate, but the outcome was
never really in doubt. As I was always certain of his guilt, I became convinced
he would be thrown out of office the day I heard about the Oval Office tapes.
From that moment on, it was just a matter of sitting back and watching the
play.
One of the minor scenes, starring an otherwise very minor player, was the 18 minute gap controversy, in which we found (although I'm not sure it was ever admitted) that the technologically challenged Dick had attempted to erase 18 minutes of the most damaging conversations. His secretary, Rose Marie Woods, apparently volunteered to take the fall. Here we see her demonstrating how she probably inadvertently erased those 18 minutes in an 18 minute long moment of forgetfulness. Apparently she was so comfortable in this position that she fell asleep.  Fast forward to the present, and allow for inflation. We now have an 18 day gap in the emails recently disclosed by the White House. Apparently, just prior to the mass firings, a strange silence descended on the principal actors in this present day farce. Okay, some bleary eyed searchers have discovered two emails of no significance in the relevant time period (November 15 to December 4, 2006) but those are indistinguishable in principle from the tell tale "clicks" in Nixon's 18 minute gap. Unfortunately, with farce, unlike tragedy, the denouement is not preordained. I wish I could say that BushCheney will be deposed at the end of this farce, but it's unlikely to happen. There are two reasons for this. First, they can run out the clock. Second, the judiciary is controlled by Bush loyalists who will no doubt, in the end, come up with a one time only expansive but fact bound definition of executive privilege that will save Bush's bacon while preserving the ability of the next Republican majority to harass the next Democratic president. Speaking of executive privilege, I am always amused that every president who invokes this anti-democratic and extra-constitutional dodge insists that he is doing it for the sake of future presidents. Yet, the principle is and always has been one more observed in the breach. Many of Clinton's aides testified under oath, yet we have yet to hear from a single Bush appointee who has been chilled at all in his/her conversations with the Leader. Shouldn't some intrepid reporter (if one exists, other than Helen Thomas) in the White House press corps, ask Tony Snow (who appears to have changed his own mind on the subject) which aides have felt constrained by the weight of actual precedent. Judging by their casual criminality, it seems unlikely that the threat of subpoenas has constrained them. All of which might lead one to believe that the threat of subpoenas is the only hope we have to keep the executive under some sort of salutary constraint. Friday - March 16, 2007Truly shockingI'm assuming that John Aravosis had his tongue
firmly in his cheek when he expressed shock (BOMBSHELL:
White House Security Chief Reveals -- No Probe of Plame Leak There )
that the White House never conducted the leak investigation it promised after
the Plame outing. Did anyone, anywhere, really think the White House made any
attempt to "find" the leakers (Hint: look in the mirror). The shock would have
been finding out that there
had
been an investigation.
Friday - March 16, 2007Losing controlOne of the minor mysteries of the U.S. Attorney
scandal is this: Why is it that the Justice Department has released so many
highly damaging documents? Surely one would expect the Bush Administration to
stonewall Congress rather than reveal this information, given the harm it is
doing to them. There is absolutely nothing in their backgrounds or past practice
to make one believe that they would have provided this information had they been
able to avoid it.
Truth be told, in past times they could easily have avoided disclosing anything, because no one would have asked them to disclose anything. Still, just because Congress is now asking, it is somewhat puzzling that they have they delivered without much of a fight. Of course, there are those who suspect that they gave up what they did so they could hide even worse stuff, but that's not their style. I'm not saying there isn't worse stuff out there, I'm only saying ordinarily they wouldn't give up a thing. This is a sign of a wounded Administration that has lost the ability to cow the civil servants in theJjustice Department. As Gonzales pointed out, there are 110,000 employees of the Justice Department, and probably 100,000 detest him. Many of them, after all, feel nostalgic about the olden days when this was a nation of laws. After all, a lot of them are lawyers. Say what you will, but most of us believe in the rule of law. Some of those 100,000 are in a position to get this information out, possibly even to force Gonzales to release it. Bush, Rove et. al., can no longer run roughshod over the career folks at the Justice Department, and some of those career people are in possession of this information already, or can too readily obtain it. When Congress comes a calling with a subpoena, it's not Gonzales who has to find the documents that comply. It's lower level folks, folks who have no love for these people and who, Gonzales and Rove both know, wouldn't hesitate to do their civic duty. The worms have turned, so to speak, and Gonzales will probably lose his job as a result. It must be very satisfying to be vindictive and patriotic at the same time. As a sidenote to all this, Sidney Blumenthal makes an interesting observation about Gonzales' attempt to absolve himself of responsibility for this mess: Sampson's abrupt departure was followed by Gonzales' bizarre press conference on Wednesday. Speaking in a passive voice that "mistakes were made," he pleaded ignorance of "all decisions" at his department, explained that it has 110,000 employees, appealed to his modest origins, and promised to oversee the investigation of his own misfeasance. His defense was the very grounds used to fire the U.S. attorneys: poor performance. He used his failure as a shield. The entire article is well worth reading. Tuesday - March 13, 2007Long term planning at the White HouseWho says the White House is no good at long term
planning. It may have missed the boat completely on Iraq, seeing as it failed to
plan for the occupation most qualified experts predicted (and a lot of us
non-experts) and it even failed to plan for the needs of the troops it keeps
supporting. But as it turns out, it developed its campaign against U.S.
Attorneys over the long term. According to the Times the campaign against the
U.S. Attorney was initiated by Harriet Meiers (or so the White House would have
us now believe) in early 2005. Her idea was to fire them all, but the Department
of Justice was against that-not because it would be wrong but because it would
be hard to fill all those positions quickly enough. Besides, at that point,
replacements would have required Congressional approval. So, brilliant long
range planners that they are, the White House sneaked (I still prefer "snuck")
in the change in the Patriot Act allowing replacements without Congressional
input.
This entire thing was not the work of a moment; it was the result of over a year of planning. Fortunately for America (at least in this instance), this incident reveals that although the Bushies can in fact plan in advance, they are incapable of adapting to changed circumstances. That's no surprise, given our experience in Iraq, but this situation illustrates the problem in spades. Despite the fact that they lost the election, it apparently never occurred to the Bushies that going ahead with their plans might not be such a good idea, given the fact that they no longer had the spineless Specter to contend with at the Judiciary Committee. Had he been chairman he might have objected at first, but the ultimate result would have been a bill requiring Bush to fire any U.S. Attorney that he didn't like. Specter, by the way, would have provided more oversight than the House, where the entire subject would simply have been ignored. Rove, et. al, having gotten used to doing as they pleased, were unable to appreciate the rather basic fact that political realities had changed. Rove may be Bush's brain, but it clearly doesn't take much to top the original. Unfortunately, and ironically, Bush still controls the justice Department, so it's unlikely there will be any perjury prosecutions against Gonzales or his aides. Another richly ironic aspect of this case is the fact that Republicans were upset because the prosecutors failed to bring politically motivated cases against Democrats alleging, of all things, vote fraud, particularly in New Mexico and Washington. They couldn't understand why a lack of evidence should stand in the way of prosecuting Democrats for crimes that they, themselves, committed in plain sight without penalty, the lone exception being the phone jamming scandal in New Hampshire. (As Paul Krugman notes, that particular case may have been "slow walked", and it may also have been pursued only because the Democrat's civil suit made it politically impossible to ignore it). It's merely another example of their monumental arrogance that they felt privileged to push trumped up vote fraud cases against Democrats. Friday - March 09, 2007This law brought to you by H&R BlockIt's always difficult for me to give the Bush
Administration credit, even when it's due, but today I simply have to do so. For
today we read that the Administration has come up with an incredibly effective
way to reduce the corrosive influence of corporate lobbyists on our legislators
and regulators.
The solution to the problem of corruption was blindingly obvious, in retrospect. Think about it. Why do lobbyists feel the need to corrupt our legislators and regulators? Because they want the laws changed in ways that benefit their clients, right? Of course! The problem is apparent. The legislators and regulatores stand between the lobbyists and the laws that they want. The solution is also obvious. Simply cut the legislators and regulators out of the process and the whole raison d'etre for corruption is eliminated. Simple and effective, and that's just what the Administration has done, at least when it comes to the business of writing those boring, complicated tax rules: The Internal Revenue Service is asking tax lawyers and accountants who create tax shelters and exploit loopholes to take the lead in writing some of its new tax rules. The pilot project represents a further expansion of the increasingly common federal government practice of asking outsiders to do more of its work, prompting academics and other critics to complain that the government is going too far. Typical of the Administration critics to complain about every brilliant innovation it comes up with. Get this, one "critic" says “It’s not the fox guarding the hen house; it’s the fox designing the hen house,” Well, I ask you, if the whole point is to get the fox into the henhouse, who better to do the design work? And the nifty thing about this, as Atrios points out, is that only the foxes will be able to figure out how to get into the henhouse, because they'll design the code so we mere mortals will have no chance of figuring it out without a fox to guide us. That keeps the hens nice and safe for plucking by the favored few, while the rest of us merely get plucked. Wednesday - March 07, 2007Equal opportunity for felons in the Bush AdministrationWorthwhile reading at
Kos, where a diarist links to an article by
Greg Palast about one of the loathsome characters tapped to replace
one of the fired US Attorneys. It was well known that Timothy Griffin, a Rove
appartchik, was a loathsome character, but Palast makes a good case that he's an
as yet unconvicted
felon:
Timothy Griffin, Karl Rove’s assistant, the President’s pick as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas. Griffin, according to BBC Television, was the hidden hand behind a scheme to wipe out the voting rights of 70,000 citizens prior to the 2004 election. Key voters on Griffin’s hit list: Black soldiers and homeless men and women. Nice guy, eh? Naughty or nice, however, is not the issue. Targeting voters where race is a factor is a felony crime under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Apparently Mr. Griffin, being none too swift, sent some emails to his fellow conspirators. Or at least he thought he did: In October 2004, our investigations team at BBC Newsnight received a series of astonishing emails from Mr. Griffin, then Research Director for the Republican National Committee. He didn’t mean to send them to us. They were highly confidential memos meant only for RNC honchos. However, Griffin made a wee mistake. Instead of sending the emails — potential evidence of a crime — to email addresses ending with the domain name “@GeorgeWBush.com” he sent them to “@GeorgeWBush.ORG.” A website run by prankster John Wooden who owns “GeorgeWBush.org.” When Wooden got the treasure trove of Rove-ian ravings, he sent them to us. And we dug in, decoding, and mapping the voters on what Griffin called, “Caging” lists, spreadsheets with 70,000 names of voters marked for challenge. Overwhelmingly, these were Black and Hispanic voters from Democratic precincts. I wonder that it never occurred to him that there might be something wrong when no one answered the emails. This might be a good opportunity for Congress to segue from one scandal to another. Bring Griffin in to testify about his appointment as a U.S. attorney, and have him explain those emails. Congress has stlll never adequately investigated election fraud in this country, and this would present a great opportunity to start such an investigation. Friday - December 22, 2006Stupid Republican CriminalsI am well aware that the title of this post
contains a double redundancy. It is also one of those rare phrases that can be
written in any order and retain the same meaning. However, the phrase has a
special meaning today, as Josh Marshall has drawn the world's attention
to the guy who must claim the title of being the world's Stupidest Republican
criminal. The person who has claimed that dubious distinction, the person who
has beat out some world class competition, is one Todd Shriber, the now former (since Josh's post?) Director of
Communications for Congressman Denny Rehberg, a Montana Republican (what
else?).
It seems Todd didn't do too well at his alma mater (Texas Christian University). It occurred to him that it might be a good idea to get a retroactive increase in his grades so he went to a computer geek website named attrition.org for some assistance. In his own words: OK here it is: I need an adjustment to my college GPA. Is this an absurd request? Thursday - October 12, 2006Trent Lott takes on the giant corporationsWe learn in
this morning's Times that Trent Lott is leading the charge against
wicked insurers who take your premium dollars and then deny coverage when it's
needed most, relying on dense, arcane language that even lawyers have trouble
deciphering.
Tuesday - October 10, 2006Republicans prepare to eat their ownThis article
in Sunday's Times ("Foley Case Upsets Tough Balance of Capitol Hill’s Gay
Republicans") illustrates both the rot at the heart of the Republican party and
the delusional thinking on the part of both the press and some (in this case
gay) Republicans that has sustained
it.
The Foley scandal is not about homosexuality. Had he been preying on female pages, it is unlikely that events would have played out much differently. The scandal is about the cover-up. To the Republican leadership protection of their own power for its own sake was far more important than doing the right thing, even though it meant risking only a single seat, which, ironically enough, they probably could have held if they had let Foley retire as he had wanted to do. Now, as the leadership casts about for a scapegoat, it seems more and more likely that they will settle on the enemy within, the mostly closeted or semi-closeted gays (of whom I am reliably informed there are large numbers) who work in the offices of the very people who ingored Foley's predations, people who have made an electoral living out of fomenting bigotry generally, and against gays specifically. Tuesday - October 03, 2006SickTom Reynolds uses kids as a prop to hide from questions
about Foley
Sunday - August 20, 2006Yet another installment of things you couldn't make upSometimes, it looks like the Republicans go out
of their way to showcase their own incompetence and corruption. In today's New York Times we find that the IRS is
being forced to outsource it's delinquent tax collection activities because
Congress refuses to fund the people it needs to do the job. Private collection
agencies will take over the task. The deal has everything:
Thursday - July 13, 2006Joe Wilson's lawsuitWell, I just spent some time reading the
complaint in the case of Wilson v.
Libby, et. al. (you can get it in PDF form
here at Wilson's website) As some may recall, I
alluded to the possibility that Wilson might sue in my post about the Courtney fund raiser on June
30th. During that fundraiser Wilson told us more about the potential lawsuit
than I wrote about. I didn't repeat what he said, because I didn't think he
would want anyone repeating his statements at that time about potential
defendants, et. al. since he had not, at least officially, decided to sue.
I haven't researched these issues in depth. I have some passing familiarity with some of them. Since we bloggers are notoriously irresponsible, there's nothing to stop me from commenting, so here I go with some more or less informed opinion about the complaint and the lawsuit's prospects: There is no justice Could be, who knows, something coming, something big. A Cover-up in plain sight Ho-hum, yet another story about corrupt Republicans Hartford Courant: Pigs Fly! Porter Goss resigns Yet another thing you couldn't make up Yet another Republican Congressman about to go down A two-fer for John Boehner |