Firing-gate

[Mister Tee]

I, too, saw Dick Morris' byline and just guffawed and passed it by. The scary thing is the number of DC pundits who aren't wingnuts -- Mike Kinsley and Jay Carney, among others -- who have esentially bought into alot of the arguments. (If you've never gone to Time Magazine's Swampland blog, I recommend checking it just to see the contempt the commenters unleash when some correspondents -- Karen Tumulty and Ana Marie Cox exceptions -- have tried to push the "it's all just politics" line)

A really essential element to this story is the under-reported fact of the slipped-in provision in the Patriot Act, which allowed the White House to make these appointments without input from the Senate or even the traditional home-state Senators. That's a part of the charade that's truly unprecedented, and which suggests the whole thing was long and carefully planned.

When I first heard this story, I though maybe fiing Carol Lam was the basic intent, and that others were thrown in to camouflage it (like a mystery novel where a guy wants to kill one target but kills half a dozen strangers to make it look like a serial killer). But it turns out all but one, as Sonic says, were also "unhelpful" to the Rove strategy of promoting vote fraud/suppressing future votes -- they got too greedy and obvious, including firing people literally among the top ten rated US Attorneys in the country. Their only attempt at concealment was that one guy, who apparently DID have competence issues -- and now it turns out he wasn't on the original list; he was only added because it would have rendered the whole cover story more ludicrous to leave him out.

It is hugely gratifying to have the public so overwhelmingly (by the polling) see through the blather, despite the press' lackluster pursuit of the matter. (As I said earlier, Josh Marshall, not any journalist, deserves all the Woodward/Bernstein credit for making this story go) It's pretty much only the 28-percent-ers like criddic who are aboard now -- and it's clear at this point that live footage of Bush sodomizing a girl scout wouldn't be enough to shake their faith.

[Sonic Youth]

You're absolutely right, Damien. There was no good reason to fire those attorneys (save perhaps one, who does appear to have been legitimately incompetant). And yes, no one can seem to come up with any defense, other than firing them didn't break any laws.

Unfortunately, the right wing apologists are correct in one respect. The truth of the matter is, they had every right to fire those eight attorneys. They really did. I know, the firing of eight U.S. attorneys in the middle of the term is unusual. Yes, it's standard practice for presidents to fire a whole bunch at the beginning of their terms, and less of a big deal because of that. (Although they sometimes get rehired as well.) And I don't remember where I read this, but until now only ten U.S. attorneys had ever been fired in the middle of a term. But tough crap, because they had every right to do it. If an administration fires U.S. attorney's in an effort to obstruct justice, there is nothing that directly prohibits them from doing so. I wonder if an administration would be exempt from discrimination lawsuits were it to fire all the black U.S. attorneys and replace them with white attorneys. And if the Bush fanboys would defend such an inethical practice so vociferously for the mere reason that no laws were broken.

But here's why Criddic has got to understand why Bush and Gonzales are being subjected to all this scrutiny. (Dick Morris half-understands this.) Because they did this surreptitiously! This is why they find themselves dealing with so many ongoing problems. They are dishonest and act like they have something to hide. And that's why everyone suspects they are up to no good. Why this is difficult for some people (though not many) to get is bewildering.

Had they just done this in some above-the-board way that wouldn't make them suspect, had they put out a press release saying "We are conducting a review of our U.S. attorneys, and we are firing these eight because we don't think they are following our priorities and we're not happy with them." If they just did that, they wouldn't be in all this trouble. Oh, we would have complained. We wouldn't have taken them at their word. We'd say "Isn't it interesting that Carol Lam just locked up Randy 'Duke' Cunningham, and now they're firing her?" But we wouldn't be able to make anything out of it. They'd say, "No, that isn't why" and we'd have very little argument with them since it is their absolute, total legal right to do what they did.

But they didn't. And now they're in hot water because we are all sick of being lied to. All the back and forth emails, all the withholding of information, all the lying to the attorneys, the lying to Congress, the lying to each other, the lying lying lying. So I don't care if this firing didn't break any laws, and I don't care if it turns out there was no crime they covered up. I want them under oath, under subpoenas and facing consequences for the disregard they have towards their country.

And don't say there were no lies here, Criddic. Do you want me to list them?

[Damien]

I ignored Morris's atrticle til you recommended it, Sonic.

It's almost sad how toothless the right wing apologists have been in trying to defend Gonzales et al in all this. The initial talking point of Clinton fired ALL of the attormeys quickly fell by the wayside as the obvious was pointed out: this is standard operation for every president at the beginning of his administration; wholesale firings do not normally occur in the middle of an administration.

And if there were any good reason for these Republican US Attorneys to have been fired, then certainly Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Twit Hume et al would be mouthing them.

Morris talks about voting fraud (pretty hilarious given this administration's culpability in this area) but as an article in Daily Kos demonstrated the so-called fraud here was not people trying to vote illegally, but canvasers who had been hired to register new voters, getting a certain amount of money for each name. So they added names like Ethel Mertz, Sandy Beach, Toto the Dog etc to up their pay. They scammed the local Democratic organizations who hired them -- no one tried to vote under the names of these non-existent people. And that's way the cases weren't pursued.

It's also pathetic that Morris would say "When a U.S. attorney chooses to go light in prosecuting . . .political corruption" since Attorney Lam in San Diego nabbed Republican favorite Duke Cunningham (who famously said war protestors should be lined up against a war and shot) and was going after another Administration toady, Jerry Lewis, when she was fired.

But it seems that we're past the point where Republican lies can convince anyone less gullible than criddic.

From USA Today:

POLL BACKS SUBPOENAS OF BUSH AIDES

By Susan Page WASHINGTON

Americans overwhelmingly support a congressional investigation into White House involvement in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, and they say President Bush and his aides should answer questions about it without invoking executive privilege.

In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday-Sunday, respondents said by nearly 3-to-1 that Congress should issue subpoenas to force White House officials to testify.

There is skepticism about the motives of both the administration and congressional Democrats:

•By 53%-26%, respondents say the U.S. attorneys were dismissed primarily for political reasons, not because they weren't doing their jobs well — as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has said.

•By 59%-30%, they say Democrats are investigating the dismissals mostly for political advantage, not because of ethical concerns.

Even so, the findings underscore the president's risks. The White House last week offered to allow adviser Karl Rove and other aides to answer questions — but only in private, not under oath, and without a transcript being prepared.

The Senate and House judiciary committees have authorized subpoenas.

The poll finds little sympathy for the administration's claim that White House aides shouldn't have to testify to ensure that a president gets candid advice. By 68%-26%, those surveyed say the president should drop the claim of executive privilege in this case.

That's similar to the public's view in 1998 when asked if President Clinton's aides should testify about the Monica Lewinsky affair.

Interest in this controversy is much lower than it was in the Lewinsky scandal, however. Only 14% are following the U.S. attorneys story very closely; 32% are following it somewhat closely. One in five say they aren't following it at all.

On whether Gonzales should resign, Americans are split: 38% say he should go and 38% say he should stay; 24% have no opinion.

Partisanship plays a big role. Republicans by 52%-20% say Gonzales should stay in the job. Democrats by 53%-27% say he should resign. Independents divide almost evenly.

[Sonic Youth]

I assume when you all saw Criddic had posted an article about the firing scandals, your first instinct was the same as mine: to ignore it. When you saw it was written by that toe-sucking slimeball clown Dick Morris, your instinct was to doubly ignore it. But you know what? Read it. Because it's actually quite interesting. Sure, it's the typical lip service about how this is such a maligned administration, but it also represents where the few steadfast Bush loyalists' heads are at. So much injustice has been laid upon this administration's feet, so much smearing of his good name. No surprise. Such a great and powerful leader is going to have so many horrible enemies. But why is Bush letting US down? It's so evident that there is a concerted effort to bring this man down. All this confusion easily be cleared up, and all the public opinion can be won over, with a mere explanation. WE see what's going on! Why is the prez and his subordinates not making it clear?! They did nothing wrong! They are honest, ethical and moral in everything they do! So why are they acting like they have something to hide?? I just don't understand it!

I love it. :p

But some Republicans are finally getting it, and have jumped on (or off) the bandwagon. Criddic, if you want to scare yourself to death, read this piece by Robert Novak. That's right... Robert Novak.


A President All Alone

By Robert D. Novak
Monday, March 26, 2007; 12:00 AM

Two weeks earlier on Capitol Hill, there was a groundswell of Republican demands -- public and private -- that President Bush pardon Scooter Libby. Last week, as Alberto Gonzales came under withering Democratic fire, there were no public GOP declarations of support amid private predictions of the attorney general's demise.

Republican leaders in Congress, who asked not to be quoted by name, predicted early last week that Gonzales would fall because the Justice Department botched the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. By week's end, they stipulated that the president would not sack his longtime aide and that Gonzales would leave only on his own initiative. But there was still an ominous lack of congressional support for the attorney general.

"Gonzales never has developed a base of support for himself up here," a House Republican leader told me. But this is less a Gonzales problem than a Bush problem. With nearly two years remaining in his presidency, George W. Bush is alone. In half a century, I have not seen a president so isolated from his own party in Congress -- not Jimmy Carter, not even Richard Nixon as he faced impeachment.

Republicans in Congress do not trust their president to protect them. That alone is sufficient reason to withhold statements of support for Gonzales, because such a gesture could be quickly followed by his resignation under pressure. Rep. Adam Putnam (Fla.), the highly regarded young chairman of the House Republican Conference, praised Donald Rumsfeld in November only to see him sacked shortly thereafter.

But not many Republican lawmakers would speak up for Gonzales even if they were sure Bush would stick with him. He is the least popular Cabinet member on Capitol Hill, even more disliked than Rumsfeld was. The word most often used by Republicans to describe the management of the Justice Department under Gonzales is "incompetent."

Attorneys general in recent decades have ranged from skilled political operatives close to the president (most notably Bobby Kennedy under John F. Kennedy) to nonpolitical lawyers detached from the president (such as Ed Levi under Gerald Ford). Gonzales is surely close to Bush, but nobody would accuse him of being skilled at politics. He puzzled and alarmed conservatives with a January speech in which he claimed that he would take over from the White House the selection of future federal judicial nominees.

The saving grace that some Republicans find in the dispute over U.S. attorneys is that, at least temporarily, it draws attention away from debate over an unpopular war. But the overriding feeling in the Republican cloakroom is that the Justice Department and the White House could not have been more inept in dealing with the president's unquestioned right to appoint -- and replace -- federal prosecutors.

The I-word (incompetence) is also used by Republicans in describing the Bush administration generally. Several of them I talked to cited a trifecta of incompetence: the Walter Reed hospital scandal, the FBI's misuse of the USA Patriot Act and the U.S. attorneys firing fiasco. "We always have claimed that we were the party of better management," one House leader told me. "How can we claim that anymore?"

The reconstruction of the Bush administration after the president's reelection in 2004, though a year late, clearly improved his team. Yet the addition of extraordinary public servants Josh Bolten, Tony Snow and Rob Portman has not changed the image of incompetence.

A few Republicans blame incessant attacks from the new Democratic majority in Congress for that image. Many more say today's problems in the administration derive from the continuing impact of yesterday's mistakes. The answer that is not entertained by the president's most severe GOP critics, even when not speaking for quotation, is that this is just the governing style of George W. Bush and will not change while he is in the Oval Office.

Regarding Libby and Gonzales, unofficial word from the White House is not reassuring. One credible source says the president will never -- not even on the way out of office in January 2009 -- pardon Libby. Another equally good source says the president will never ask Gonzales to resign. That exactly reverses the prevailing Republican opinion in Congress. Bush is alone.

[Sonic Youth]

When Will Fredo Get Whacked?
By Frank Rich
The New York Times

Sunday 25 March 2007

President Bush wants to keep everything that happens in his White House secret, but when it comes to his own emotions, he's as transparent as a teenager on MySpace.

On Monday morning he observed the Iraq war's fourth anniversary with a sullen stay-the-course peroration so perfunctory he seemed to sleepwalk through its smorgasbord of recycled half-truths (Iraqi leaders are "beginning to meet the benchmarks") and boilerplate ("There will be good days, and there will be bad days"). But at a press conference the next day to defend his attorney general, the president was back in the saddle, guns blazing, Mr. Bring 'Em On reborn. He vowed to vanquish his Democratic antagonists much as he once, so very long ago, pledged to make short work of insurgents in Iraq.

The Jekyll-and-Hyde contrast between these two performances couldn't be a more dramatic indicator of Mr. Bush's priorities in his presidency's endgame. His passion for protecting his power and his courtiers far exceeds his passion for protecting the troops he's pouring into Iraq's civil war. But why go to the mat for Alberto Gonzales? Even Bush loyalists have rarely shown respect for this crony whom the president saddled with the nickname Fredo; they revolted when Mr. Bush flirted with appointing him to the Supreme Court and shun him now. The attorney general's alleged infraction - misrepresenting a Justice Department purge of eight United States attorneys, all political appointees, for political reasons - seems an easy-to-settle kerfuffle next to his infamous 2002 memo dismissing the Geneva Conventions' strictures on torture as "quaint" and "obsolete."

That's why the president's wild overreaction is revealing. So far his truculence has been largely attributed to his slavish loyalty to his White House supplicants, his ideological belief in unilateral executive-branch power and, as always, his need to shield the Machiavellian machinations of Karl Rove (who installed a protégé in place of one of the fired attorneys). But the fierceness of Mr. Bush's response - to the ludicrous extreme of forbidding transcripts of Congressional questioning of White House personnel - indicates there is far more fire to go with all the Beltway smoke.

Mr. Gonzales may be a nonentity, but he's a nonentity like Zelig. He's been present at every dubious legal crossroads in Mr. Bush's career. That conjoined history began in 1996, when Mr. Bush, then governor of Texas, was summoned for jury duty in Austin. To popular acclaim, he announced he was glad to lend his "average guy" perspective to a drunken driving trial. But there was one hitch. On the juror questionnaire, he left blank a required section asking, "Have you ever been accused, or a complainant, or a witness in a criminal case?"

A likely explanation for that omission, unknown to the public at the time, was that Mr. Bush had been charged with disorderly conduct in 1968 and drunken driving in 1976. Enter Mr. Gonzales. As the story is told in "The President's Counselor," a nonpartisan biography by the Texas journalist Bill Minutaglio, Mr. Gonzales met with the judge presiding over the trial in his chambers (a meeting Mr. Gonzales would years later claim to have "no recollection" of requesting) and saved his client from jury duty. Mr. Minutaglio likens the scene to "The Godfather" - casting Mr. Gonzales not as the feckless Fredo, however, but as the "discreet 'fixer' attorney," Robert Duvall's Tom Hagen.

Mr. Gonzales's career has been laced with such narrow escapes for both him and Mr. Bush. As a partner at the Houston law firm of Vinson & Elkins, Mr. Gonzales had worked for Enron until 1994. After Enron imploded in 2001, reporters wanted to know whether Ken Lay's pals in the Bush hierarchy had received a heads up about the company's pending demise before its unfortunate shareholders were left holding the bag. The White House said that Mr. Gonzales had been out of the Enron loop "to the best of his recollection." This month Murray Waas of The National Journal uncovered a more recent close shave: Just as Justice Department investigators were about to examine "documents that might have shed light on Gonzales's role" in the administration's extralegal domestic wiretapping program last year, Mr. Bush shut down the investigation.

It was Mr. Gonzales as well who threw up roadblocks when the 9/11 Commission sought documents and testimony from the White House about the fateful summer of 2001. [/b]Less widely known is Mr. Gonzales's curious behavior in the C.I.A. leak case while he was still White House counsel. When the Justice Department officially notified him on the evening of Sept. 29, 2003, that it was opening an investigation into the outing of Valerie Wilson, he immediately informed Andrew Card, Mr. Bush's chief of staff. But Mr. Gonzales waited another 12 hours to officially notify the president and inform White House employees to preserve all materials relevant to the investigation. As Chuck Schumer said after this maneuver became known, "Every good prosecutor knows that any delay could give a culprit time to destroy the evidence."[/b]

Now that 12-hour delay has been matched by the 18-day gap in the Justice Department e-mails turned over to Congress in the dispute over the attorney purge. And we're being told by Tony Snow that Mr. Bush has "no recollection" of hearing anything about the firings. But even these literal echoes of Watergate cannot obliterate the contours of the story this White House wants to hide.

Do not be distracted by the apples and oranges among the fired attorneys. Perhaps a couple of their forced resignations were routine. But in other instances, incriminating evidence coalesces around a familiar administration motive: its desperate desire to cover up the corruption that soiled what was supposed to be this White House's greatest asset, its protection of the nation's security. This was the motive that drove the White House to vilify Joseph Wilson when he challenged fraudulent prewar intelligence about Saddam's W.M.D. The e-mails in the attorney flap released so far suggest that this same motive may have driven the Justice Department to try mounting a similar strike at Patrick Fitzgerald, the United States attorney charged with investigating the Wilson leak.

In March 2005, while preparing for the firings, Mr. Gonzales's now-jettisoned chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, produced a chart rating all 93 United States attorneys nationwide. Mr. Fitzgerald, widely admired as one of the nation's best prosecutors (most famously of terrorists), was somehow slapped with the designation "not distinguished." Two others given that same rating were fired. You have to wonder if Mr. Fitzgerald was spared because someone in a high place belatedly calculated the political firestorm that would engulf the White House had this prosecutor been part of a Saturday night massacre in the middle of the Wilson inquiry.

Another canned attorney to track because of her scrutiny of Bush administration national security scandals is Carol Lam. She was fired from her post in San Diego after her successful prosecution of Representative Duke Cunningham, the California Republican who took $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors. Mr. Rove has publicly suggested that Ms. Lam got the ax because "she would not commit resources to prosecute immigration offenses." That's false. Last August an assistant attorney general praised her for doubling her immigration prosecutions; last week USA Today crunched the statistics and found that she ranked seventh among her 93 peers in successful prosecutions for 2006, with immigration violations accounting for the largest single crime category prosecuted during her tenure.

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

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

Not yet anyway. "I'm not going to resign," Mr. Gonzales asserted last week as he played the minority card, rounding up Hispanic supporters to cheer his protestations of innocence. "I'm going to stay focused on protecting our kids." Actually, he's going to stay focused on protecting the president. Once he can no longer be useful in that role, it's a sure thing that like Scooter before him, Fredo will be tossed overboard.

[criddic3]

March 21, 2007

The Phoniest Scandal of the Century (So Far)
By Dick Morris

When will the Bush administration grow some guts? Except for its resolute -- read: stubborn -- position on Iraq, the White House seems incapable of standing up for itself and battling for its point of view. The Democratic assault on the administration over the dismissal of United States attorneys is the most fabricated and phony of scandals, but the Bush people offer only craven apologies, half-hearted defenses, and concessions. Instead, they should stand up to the Democrats and defend the conduct of their own Justice Department.

There is no question that the attorney general and the president can dismiss United States attorneys at any time and for any reason. We do not have civil servant U.S. attorneys but maintain the process of presidential appointment for a very good reason: We consider who prosecutes whom and for what to be a question of public policy that should reflect the president's priorities and objectives. When a U.S. attorney chooses to go light in prosecuting voter fraud and political corruption, it is completely understandable and totally legitimate for a president and an attorney general to decide to fire him or her and appoint a replacement who will do so.

The Democratic attempt to attack Bush for exercising his presidential power to dismiss employees who serve at his pleasure smacks of nothing so much as the trumped-up grounds for the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson in 1868. Back then, radical Republicans tried to oust him for failing to obey the Tenure of Office Act, which they passed, barring him from firing members of his Cabinet (in this case, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton) without Senate approval. Soon after Johnson's acquittal, the Supreme Court invalidated the Tenure of Office Act, in effect affirming Johnson's position.

But instead of loudly asserting its view that voter fraud is, indeed, worthy of prosecution and that U.S. attorneys who treat such cases lightly need to go find new jobs, the Bush administration acts, for all the world, like the kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. All Republican supporters of the administration can do is to point to Bill Clinton's replacement of U.S. attorneys when he took office. Because the president and the attorney general insist on acting guilty, the rest of the country has no difficulty in assuming that they are.

Bush, Rove, Gonzales and Co. should explain why the U.S. attorneys were dismissed by emphasizing the importance of the cases they were refusing to prosecute. By doing so, they can turn the Democratic attacks on them into demands to go easy on fraudulent voting. A good sense of public relations -- and some courage -- could turn this issue against the Democrats for blocking Bush's efforts to crack down on the criminals he wanted prosecuted.

In making such a big deal over the routine exercise of a presidential prerogative to fire these prosecutors, the Democrats, led by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) may be biting off more than they can chew. Unless the administration turns and aggressively defends its decision to get rid of these particular appointees, it could be left holding the bag and defending the U.S. attorneys' decision to avoid prosecuting voter-fraud cases.

If the administration continues to follow its run-and-hide policy, it will look terrible asserting claims of executive privilege as it seeks to shield its appointees from Senate interrogation and its documents from committee scrutiny. But if it contextualizes the issue by using the specific failings of the dismissed appointees to prosecute particular cases, it will assume the high ground and its procedural objections will be seen in a more positive light by the American people. If only the administration would show some courage.

Morris, a former political adviser to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and President Bill Clinton, is the author of “Condi vs. Hillary: The Next Great Presidential Race.” To get all of Dick Morris’s and Eileen McGann’s columns for free by email, go to www.dickmorris.com.

[Akash]

HA! Love it! This won't stop them from lying but you know Bush and his cronies must be upset over this one. I love that the Dems actually grew a pair on this issue and are at least doing the bare minimum of what they should be doing, which sadly, is revolutionary for them.

NY Times
March 21, 2007
House Panel Authorizes Subpoenas for Top Bush Aides

By CARL HULSE and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON, March 21 — A House Judiciary subcommittee today authorized subpoenas for Karl Rove, President Bush’s political adviser, and other senior White House officials in the investigation into the firing of eight United States attorneys.

Democrats said the subpoenas, approved on a voice vote of the panel, would not be issued immediately but could provide leverage for Congress in trying to win the testimony of the aides being sought.

“We have worked toward voluntary cooperation on this investigation, but we must prepare for the possibility that the Justice Department and White House will continue to hide the truth,” said Representative Linda Sanchez of California, chairwoman of the subcommittee on commercial and administrative law.

Republicans on the subcommittee said they did not dispute the power of Congress to call the officials, but said the action was premature and smacked of politics.

“The only purpose of the subpoenas is to the fan the flames and photo ops of partisan controversy,” said Representative Chris Cannon of Utah, the senior Republican on the subcommittee.

President Bush and Congress appear to be headed toward a constitutional showdown over the demands for testimony and for internal White House documents. The prospects of a showdown were underscored this afternoon as Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said the actual issuance of subpoenas would lead the administration to withdraw its offer of cooperation.

Under growing political pressure, the White House had offered to allow private interviews with Mr. Rove, Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel; and two other officials. It also offered to provide access to e-mail messages and other communications about the dismissals, but not those between White House officials.

Democrats promptly rejected the offer, which specified that the officials would not testify under oath, that there would be no transcript and that Congress would not subsequently subpoena them.

“We could meet at the local pub to that have that kind of gathering,” said Representative John Conyers of Michigan, chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

But Mr. Snow said, “If they issue subpoenas, the offer is withdrawn, because it means that they will not have responded to the offer. They will have rejected the offer.”

“The moment subpoenas are issued, it means that they’ve rejected the offer,” Mr. Snow emphasized.

Responding defiantly on Tuesday, Mr. Bush said he would resist any effort to put his top aides under “the klieg lights” in “show trials” on Capitol Hill, and he reiterated his support for Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, whose backing among Republicans on Capitol Hill ebbed further.

“We will not go along with a partisan fishing expedition aimed at honorable public servants,” the president told reporters in a brief and hastily convened appearance in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House.

The pointed exchange was set off by a Democratic inquiry into whether the White House let politics interfere with law enforcement by dismissing eight of the nation’s 93 United States attorneys. The dismissals and the way the Justice Department informed Congress about them have created an uproar in both parties, as Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill have demanded explanations.

Tuesday’s confrontation was the sharpest yet between the Bush White House and the new Democratic majority in Congress on a matter of oversight, and it set the stage for a legal showdown over executive privilege. The White House vowed to fight any subpoenas in court.

The fallout from the dismissals continued to ripple across the capital.

In the Senate, lawmakers responded to the furor over the firings on Tuesday by voting overwhelmingly to revoke the authority they had granted the administration last year under the USA Patriot Act to install federal prosecutors indefinitely without Senate confirmation.

Lawmakers also spent the day poring over 3,000 pages of newly released e-mail messages that provided a glimpse inside the Justice Department as officials planned the dismissals and then reacted to the issue as it ignited into a political crisis.

The administration has voluntarily released e-mail messages from inside the Justice Department but has drawn the line at releasing communications among members of the White House staff, citing the tradition that a president is entitled to advice from his aides that does not have to be couched out of concern that it will become public.

The e-mail messages showed that the agency only gradually appreciated how seriously it had miscalculated the response the firings would provoke. As late as early February, D. Kyle Sampson, who stepped down last week as Mr. Gonzales’s chief of staff, suggested the uproar would blow over, writing, “The issue has basically run its course.”

With many Democrats and a growing number of Republicans calling for Mr. Gonzales to step down, Mr. Bush placed a morning telephone call on Tuesday to his beleaguered attorney general, to offer him “a very strong vote of confidence,” Mr. Snow said. Still, Mr. Gonzales’s support among Republicans appeared increasingly thin.

“His ability to effectively serve the president and lead the Justice Department is greatly compromised,” Representative Adam H. Putnam of Florida, chairman of the House Republican Conference, said during a lunchtime interview with reporters. “I think he himself should evaluate his ability to serve as an effective attorney general.”

Against that backdrop, the White House counsel, Fred F. Fielding, went to Capitol Hill to make what Mr. Bush called a “reasonable proposal” to permit members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees to conduct private interviews with Mr. Rove; Ms. Miers; William Kelley, the deputy White House counsel; and Scott Jennings, a deputy to Mr. Rove.

In a carefully worded letter to the committees, Mr. Fielding said the White House was prepared to give Congress “a virtually unprecedented window into personnel decision-making within the executive branch.”

One of two Republican lawmakers who attended the meeting, Mr. Cannon of Utah, said in an interview afterward that he had pressed Mr. Fielding on whether he “understood that a lie would be prosecutable,” even if the interview was not conducted under oath. “He said, ‘Yes, we understand that,’ ” Mr. Cannon said. Lying to Congress can be a crime even if the false statements are not made under oath.

But Democrats dismissed Mr. Fielding’s offer as window dressing. Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, suggested that the administration had misled him, and released a Justice Department letter that said it was not aware that Mr. Rove had played any role in the decision to appoint one of his former deputies as United States attorney in Arkansas.

“I want to hear Karl Rove testify under oath about the role he played in this whole affair,” Mr. Reid said.

As the war of words escalated, people on both sides acknowledged a legal fight carried political risks. Beth Nolan, who was counsel to President Bill Clinton and twice testified to Congress under subpoena, said she suspected the clash would lead to more negotiations, and not a court fight. “There’s the legal path to the fight and the political path,” she said. “It’s much more likely that you’ll see a political path.”

The Bush administration has been a fierce defender of presidential powers but has solved most of the issues without going to court. For instance, the president and Vice President Dick Cheney agreed to be interviewed by the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, although they did so behind closed doors and not under oath. Nevertheless Mr. Bush said Tuesday that he would “oppose any attempts to subpoena White House officials.” Asked if he would be willing to go to court over the matter, Mr. Bush said, “Absolutely.”

Mr. Bush once again defended the dismissals, and he said it was “natural and appropriate” for members of the White House staff to discuss them with the Justice Department. At the same time, he offered an apology to the dismissed United States attorneys, saying, “I regret that these resignations turned into such a public spectacle.”

The motivation for the dismissals is still not fully understood. Democrats, including Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, who is leading the inquiry in the Senate, and Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, have said they want to know whether prosecutors were dismissed to thwart public corruption investigations.

“The time for slippery explanations is over,” Mrs. Feinstein said Tuesday, after the Senate voted 94 to 2 to repeal the Patriot Act provision. “We don’t intend to stop now. We intend to flesh out who did what, when and why.”

The Justice Department e-mail messages did little to flesh that out. They contain no mention that the firings were motivated by any particular prosecutors’ action or inaction in any public corruption cases. Nor do the messages show that the Bush administration had a batch of replacement candidates in place in seven of the eight United States attorney’s offices.

But the documents do show how unprepared the Justice Department was early this year for the response. On Dec. 7, 2006, the day the prosecutors were told they were being removed, Gerald Parksy, a prominent California Republican fund-raiser and friend of the president’s, “put in an outraged call” to the White House protesting the dismissal of the United States attorney in San Francisco, Kevin Ryan, according to an e-mail message from a White House official to the Justice Department.

Mr. Kelley, the deputy White House counsel, asked one Justice Department official to provide more details of the firings to White House political aides so that they could help Mr. Rove answer calls about the action. As the uproar mounted, officials at the department headquarters scrambled to prepare a list of reasons for removing the prosecutors, struggling at times to find substantial causes, particularly for Daniel Bogden in Nevada, Margaret Chiara in Michigan and David C. Iglesias of New Mexico.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007....=slogin

[OscarGuy]

I find it terribly amusing how much Bush is trying to hide the truth. If his administration really had nothing to hide, he wouldn't be fighting subpoenas. After all this administration has done, will THIS finally be their undoing? One can only hope.

[Sonic Youth]

Anyone want to take bets when Gonzales will be pink-slipped?

I wouldn't be surprised if it happens tonight, before the subpoenas are issued. I'd say around, oh, 8pm Washington DC time. Check around then to see if he's decided he "wants to spend more time with his family."

If not, then soon enough.


--------------------------------------


Editorial Pages Call for Axing Attorney General


Editor & Publisher

Published: March 14, 2007 7:50 AM ET updated 10:40 AM ET

NEW YORK The New York Times got the editorial ball rolling on Monday, calling for the firing of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales due largely, if not completely, to the burgeoning scandal involving the forced departure of eight U.S. attorneys. Now the notion has spread across the country.

"We haven't seen a renegade U.S. Justice Department like this since John Mitchell ran it for President Nixon," declared the Sacramento Bee. "With a new Congress beginning to exercise serious oversight, the problems at the Justice Department and with its leader, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, are becoming clearer by the day. And what is becoming most clear is that Gonzales must go."

The Washington Post today implied the same thing. The Los Angeles Times agreed but placed much of the blame on President Bush. The Philadephia Inquirer demanded: "U.S. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales should resign. If he ever does, the nation could take it as a clear sign that President Bush finally grasps the need to preserve core civil liberties while guarding against terrorism."

The Buffalo (N.Y.) News: "He should go. The country needs an attorney general who wants to uphold the law, not subvert it."

From Florida Today in Melbourne: "He should be removed and replaced with someone willing to protect the Constitution. Chances are Bush won't do that."

The Financial Times weighed in: "Mr. Gonzales had every right to sack prosecutors, who are political appointees. But he had no right to mislead Congress about why he did so – even though he is now blaming lower officals for the misinformation. Mr Gonzales has shown a disdain for Congress and the rights of the American people. He has amply proved that he will never be anything other than Mr Bush’s lawyer – a mere apologist for the imperial presidency. The affair has already claimed one top scalp at the justice department. It is high time Mr Gonzales stepped down too."

The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky. urged President Bush to take two steps: "First, he should fire Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Whether Mr. Gonzales is the instigator of this travesty or merely the unprincipled executor of White House political demands, this debacle is further evidence of his insuitability for his critically sensitive post.

"Then, the president can answer this question: If the eight prosecutors were dismissed for failing to respond to Republican political concerns, can Americans assume that his other U.S. attorneys do fulfill a partisan agenda?"

The San Francisco Chronicle: "These latest incidents underscore the obvious: Gonzales must resign. The nation needs an attorney general who can restore confidence in the administration of justice."

The Bush-friendly Dallas Morning News came close to calling for Gonzales' exit, but more for the alleged abuse of the Patriot Act revealed in the recent revelations about the FBI. Sen. John Cornyn told Morning News editorial board Monday that he was "disappointed" in Gonzales' performance, adding that there's a perception that he has not drawn an adequate firewall between his office and the White House.

"Frankly, we think the problem is real, not a perception," the newspaper observed. "It demands much more than apologies from FBI Director Robert Mueller and Mr. Gonzales – starting with tough questioning from the Senate Judiciary Committee. The nation's two top cops should know that aggressive law enforcement and due process aren't mutually exclusive. If they think otherwise, then they're not the right individuals for these jobs."

The Chicago Tribune also falls short of calling for a dismissal for now. But it closes its editorial: "This is a fast-evolving story, with crucial events and motives still to be probed and explained, by the administration and the Congress. As the facts of this disturbing but still incomplete narrative come together, we're likely as a nation to learn if the answer to the question that opens this editorial is yes or no. If it's yes, Gonzales should resign. "

That opening question: "Did the attorney general of the United States, Alberto Gonzales, engineer the dismissals of several federal prosecutors for partisan political reasons?"

Gonzales said at a press conference on Tuesday that he would not quit, although he accepted responsibility for how the attorney layoff was handled.

The Washington Post editorial, "The Story Unravels," concludes:

"Now that the political costs are higher than the administration could have imagined, now that senior officials have squandered their claim to credibility, it is imperative that the entire story of the firings be uncovered. As we have said previously, the administration is entitled to prosecutors who reflect its policies and carry out its priorities. It is not entitled to treat federal prosecutors like political pawns -- nor is it entitled, any longer, to the benefit of the doubt about the propriety of its conduct.

"Mr. Gonzales can make self-serving declarations about his belief in 'accountability,' as he did at a news conference yesterday; he can proclaim his plans to 'ascertain what happened here . . . and take corrective actions.' Nothing in his record gives any reason for confidence that anything will change in a department under his leadership."

The Los Angeles Times agrees but also casts its eyes higher:

"It should surprise no one that Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales finds himself in the middle of a growing scandal. But don't blame him for the lack of principled leadership at the Justice Department. Blame his boss. President Bush appointed a man clearly unqualified for the job.

"We opposed Gonzales' nomination to be attorney general two years ago, arguing that the nation's top law enforcement job should go to someone who understands the limits as well as the power of the law, and someone who understands that his loyalty is to the Constitution as much as it is to the president. Gonzales' atrocious performance as White House counsel, when he enabled far too many shortcuts in the war on terror, was ample reason to disqualify him for attorney general.

"This attorney general is loyal to a fault to Bush. He is too loyal to be an effective lawyer, causing the president harm both when he worked at the White House and now that he oversees the Justice Department.

'The administration's broader disdain for legal niceties underlies recent revelations about the abuse of Patriot Act powers to secretly obtain private data about U.S. citizens, as well as the dismissal of U.S. attorneys. In the case of these prosecutors, Gonzales was apparently driven by his desire to continue making himself useful to the president and the party. That's why his chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, resigned Monday. He was working a little too closely with the White House in orchestrating the ouster of several federal prosecutors late last year....

"The fact that the White House was complaining to the Justice Department that David Iglesias, the well-regarded federal prosecutor in New Mexico, was insufficiently committed to taking up voter fraud cases that Republicans cared deeply about is rather alarming. Alarming, but not surprising — not so long as Gonzales is attorney general."

[OscarGuy]

E-mail indicates Rove role in firings

By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 35 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - White House political adviser Karl Rove raised questions in early 2005 about replacing some federal prosecutors but allowing others to stay, an e-mail released Thursday shows.
ADVERTISEMENT

The one-page document, which spans e-mails between the White House and the Justice Department in January 2005, also indicates Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was considering a range of options in dismissing U.S. attorneys early in
President Bush's second term.

But it concludes with Gonzales' top aide warning that an across-the-board housecleaning "would certainly send ripples through the U.S. attorney community if we told folks they got one term only."

The e-mails released Thursday by the Justice Department indicated that Gonzales and his then-chief aide, Kyle Sampson, suggested replacing 15 percent to 20 percent of federal prosecutors they identified as underperformers.

Sampson resigned under fire this week over the Justice Department's mishandling of the firings of eight U.S. attorneys — and misleading Congress about the process.

[Damien]

Paul Krugman in the NY Times:

OVERBLOWN PERSONAL MATTERS
By PAUL KRUGMAN
March 12, 2007

Nobody is surprised to learn that the Justice Department was lying when it claimed that recently fired federal prosecutors were dismissed for poor performance. Nor is anyone surprised to learn that White House political operatives were pulling the strings.

What is surprising is how fast the truth is emerging about what Alberto Gonzales, the attorney general, dismissed just five days ago as an “overblown personnel matter.”

Sources told Newsweek that the list of prosecutors to be fired was drawn up by Mr. Gonzales’s chief of staff, “with input from the White House.” And Allen Weh, the chairman of the New Mexico Republican Party, told McClatchy News that he twice sought Karl Rove’s help — the first time via a liaison, the second time in person — in getting David Iglesias, the state’s U.S. attorney, fired for failing to indict Democrats. “He’s gone,” he claims Mr. Rove said.

After that story hit the wires, Mr. Weh claimed that his conversation with Mr. Rove took place after the decision to fire Mr. Iglesias had already been taken. Even if that’s true, Mr. Rove should have told Mr. Weh that political interference in matters of justice is out of bounds; Mr. Weh’s account of what he said sounds instead like the swaggering of a two-bit thug.

And the thuggishness seems to have gone beyond firing prosecutors who didn’t deliver the goods for the G.O.P. One of the fired prosecutors was — as he saw it — threatened with retaliation by a senior Justice Department official if he discussed his dismissal in public. Another was rejected for a federal judgeship after administration officials, including then-White House counsel Harriet Miers, informed him that he had “mishandled” the 2004 governor’s race in Washington, won by a Democrat, by failing to pursue vote-fraud charges.

As I said, none of this is surprising. The Bush administration has been purging, politicizing and de-professionalizing federal agencies since the day it came to power. But in the past it was able to do its business with impunity; this time Democrats have subpoena power, and the old slime-and-defend strategy isn’t working.

You also have to wonder whether new signs that Mr. Gonzales and other administration officials are willing to cooperate with Congress reflect the verdict in the Libby trial. It probably comes as a shock to realize that even Republicans can face jail time for lying under oath.

Still, a lot of loose ends have yet to be pulled. We now know exactly why Mr. Iglesias was fired, but still have to speculate about some of the other cases — in particular, that of Carol Lam, the U.S. attorney for Southern California.

Ms. Lam had already successfully prosecuted Representative Randy Cunningham, a Republican. Just two days before leaving office she got a grand jury to indict Brent Wilkes, a defense contractor, and Kyle (Dusty) Foggo, the former third-ranking official at the C.I.A. (Mr. Foggo was brought in just after the 2004 election, when, reports said, the administration was trying to purge the C.I.A. of liberals.) And she was investigating Representative Jerry Lewis, Republican of California, the former head of the House Appropriations Committee.

Was Ms. Lam dumped to protect corrupt Republicans? The administration says no, a denial that, in light of past experience, is worth precisely nothing. But how do Congressional investigators plan to get to the bottom of this story?

Another big loose end involves what U.S. attorneys who weren’t fired did to please their employers. As I pointed out last week, the numbers show that since the Bush administration came to power, federal prosecutors have investigated far more Democrats than Republicans.

But the numbers can tell only part of the story. What we really need — and it will take a lot of legwork — is a portrait of the actual behavior of prosecutors across the country. Did they launch spurious investigations of Democrats, as I suggested last week may have happened in New Jersey? Did they slow-walk investigations of Republican scandals, like the phone-jamming case in New Hampshire?

In other words, the truth about that “overblown personnel matter” has only begun to be told. The good news is that for the first time in six years, it’s possible to hope that all the facts about a Bush administration scandal will come out in Congressional hearings — or, if necessary, in the impeachment trial of Alberto Gonzales.

[criddic3]

Wasn't meant to be perceptive or succinct. But really, this is a sport that will end fairly soon. So, go ahead and have your fun while it lasts.

[Sonic Youth]

Perceptive and succinct, Criddic! Why didn't I think of that?

[criddic3]

blah blah blah

Another story intended to "expose corruption" in the Bush administration.

blah blah blah

[Mister Tee]

If there's a first Pulitzer given to a blog, it ought to go to Josh Marshall for his work on this story. Mainstream media-ites like Jay Carney at Time were dismissing this as "conspiracy theory", but Josh plugged away on it, and it's now clear it's a major scandal.

And as Paul Krugman writes today, we should ask what some US attorneys did to retain their jobs. How many ginned-up investigations (like the one against Menendez in Jersey last year) were pushed to try and influence the elections?

Nixon was a piker next to these guys.