Imagine for a moment that a sitting member of Congress had been caught in an NSA wiretap offering to obtain reduced sentences for a couple of Russian spies, or perhaps North Korean ones, in exchange for help getting the chairmanship the House Intelligence Committee of all things. The irony of that aside, the alarm over the idea that agents of a foreign government even thinking that they could influence appointments in Congress would by itself, evoke national outrage. And that member of Congress would be finished.
So, is Jane Harman finished? CQ Politics uncovered what looks like a double quid pro quo, only the spies are Israeli lobbyists for AIPAC, and Harman also got a free pass on the Justice Department investigation of her spy dealings by Alberto Gonzales, the felonious former attorney general, who thought her more useful to the administration as a Democratic booster for ... wait for it ... NSA illegal wiretapping. Oh, the irony. Something Torquemada has yet to deny...
Harman is now demanding ... demanding! ... the release of the wiretaps on which she was caught. But as a former supporter of warrantless wiretapping (at least in her case there was a warrant,) shouldn't she actually be praising the inquiry?
The Republican lawmaker's harsh comments came during an interview Monday with Cedar Rapids, Iowa, radio station WMT. They echo remarks he has made in the past about corporate executives and public apologies, but went further in suggesting suicide.
"I suggest, you know, obviously, maybe they ought to be removed," Grassley said. "But I would suggest the first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward them if they'd follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, I'm sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide.
"And in the case of the Japanese, they usually commit suicide before they make any apology."
Grassley's spokesman later "clarified" his statement to mean that he wants only rhetorical death to AIG execs. I think this guy might be the most interesting Twitterer going! Follow the Chuckster here.
Not to be outdone, the folks at Faux News suggest "exemplary hangings" in Times Square for AIG execs, and boiling them in oil...
Meanwhile the AIG fallout will mean new regulations (finally). And New York A.G. Andrew Cuomo has issued subpoenas, probing whether AIG made the bonus contracts without even knowing whether the company would have the money to pay them.
As for the bonuses, Cuomo said, "Our information is the checks were sent out on Friday."
They eventually found the money ... in all of our wallets...
Alberto Gonzales, who has kept a low profile since resigning as attorney general nearly 16 months ago, said he is writing a book to set the record straight about his controversial tenure as a senior official in the Bush administration.
Mr. Gonzales has been portrayed by critics both as unqualified for his position and instrumental in laying the groundwork for the administration's "war on terror." He was pilloried by Congress in a manner not usually directed toward cabinet officials.
"What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?" he said during an interview Tuesday, offering his most extensive comments since leaving government.
During a lunch meeting two blocks from the White House, where he served under his longtime friend, President George W. Bush, Mr. Gonzales said that "for some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror."
Another reason he might be writing the book: he can't find a job. Gonzales has had trouble getting employment since resigning from the Justice Department. In July, he suddenly began appearing in D.C. again after months of absence -- leading the Washington Post to speculate that he had landed a gig.
Yeah, you and millions of other Americans, pal, thanks to your former boss...
The Obama team releases the Blago report, and predictably, there's not much news in it (sorry, Fox News...)
The report was put together by attorney Greg Craig following Blagojevich's arrest for allegedly engaging in a scheme to sell the vacant U.S. Senate seat, as well as other state appointments and services. ...
... Obama, his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and his adviser, Valerie Jarrett, all submitted to interviews with U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald last week. Craig said neither Jarrett nor David Axelrod, another senior adviser, had any contact with Blagojevich or his office. The report did say that Dr. Eric Whitaker, a close friend of Obama's and a former Blagojevich cabinet member, was approached "by a member of the Governor's circle," deputy Gov. Louanner Peters, for information.
Obama has portrayed himself as taking a hands-off approach to the governor's decision about who to appoint to his Senate seat. In fact, the report noted that he was very much interested in who would succeed him in the Senate.
Once Jarrett said she was not interested in becoming a senator, Obama asked Emanuel to tell the governor that he would support Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., Ill. Comptroller Dan Hynes and Illinois Veterans Affairs Director Tammy Duckworth. Later, Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Cheryl Jackson, a former Blagojevich spokeswoman who heads the Chicago Urban League, were added to the list.
Probably the only new piece of news to come out of the report is that despite the assertions of the Chicago papers, and all the brouhaha those assertions created for "Senate Candidate #5,", Jesse Jackson Jr. WAS on Obama's short list. Oh, and Valerie Jarrett considered the idea of Blago heading HHS to be "ridiculous," which it was, given the games he played with Children's Hospital. I'm sure this won't stop the Roger Simons and Fox News' of the world from continuing to go after Obama on this, but there you go. If you're still exercised after that, read the report online at TPM here.
... or does "Meet the Press" with David Gregory suck? That softball interview with Condi Rice today was a low point for the show. Meanwhile, on the other side of the low-end of the dial, George Stephanopoulos, the onetime political flack, is proving to be twice the journalist that Gregory, the supposed pro, is. He did a much more in-depth, interesting interview with Joe Biden than Gregory's bland Condi love and weak roundtable, and George actually broke some news:
Sources tell me that the Obama team's review of contacts with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich will show that Rahm Emanuel had only one phone conversation with Blagojevich.
The contact, described as a "pro-forma" courtesy call, came as Emanuel was named Chief of Staff for Obama. Most of the discussion concerned Emanuel's Congressional seat (which had previously been held by Blagojevich), with only a "passing reference" to the Senate vacancy, according to these sources. No deal for the Senate vacancy was discussed.
Speculation in Washington and Chicago has been swirling for a week now over what the Obama team’s report would find. Until now, the contents of that report have been kept sealed, at the request of the U.S. Attorney’s office. Last Wednesday, Obama said he found it “a little bit frustrating” that the report had not yet been released.
The sources add that the report will show Emanuel also had four phone calls with Blagojevich Chief of Staff John Harris. During those conversations, the Senate seat was discussed. The pros and cons of various candidates were reviewed, and the sources say that Emanuel repeatedly reminded Harris that Blagojevich should focus on the message the pick would send about the governor and his administration.
Sources also confirm that Emanuel made the case for picking Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett during at least one of the conversations. In the course of that conversation, Harris asked if in return for picking Jarrett, "all we get is appreciation, right?" "Right," Emanuel responded.
To which Frank James of the Chicago Tribune's "Swamp" replies:
It struck me from the beginning of this that there probably was no 'there' there since USA Fitzgerald signaled very strongly that he wasn't going after anyone on Obama's team. It seemed like an attempt by us media types to raise questions to keep the pot stirring more than anything else.
Clearly. And shock of all shocks, all that blather will turn out to be for nothing. Poor dears. Back to end of the year countdowns for all of you!
Here's a fact the media glossed over: remember when Jesse Jackson Jr. was finally fingered as "Senate Candidate #5" in the Blago scandal? Well, what did Jr. do? No, besides call a press conference and start doing sit-down interviews, stat!...? He lawyered up. Well guess who else hired counsel:
In news that is very ominous for Candidate 5 and his family, Jesse Jackson Jr is not the only one who has lawyered up since Blago's arrest on Tuesday. Jesse Jackson Sr has done so too (h/t nextstopchicago and choochmac).
Also, the congressman's father, Jesse Jackson Sr., has retained legal council following the Blagojevich arrest.
That's from way back on December 11. And it's just one of five reasons the Blago scandal really, really sucks for Jesse Jr:
#5. His family's rep is already tainted, by his dad's past ... um ... deal making. And now, he's hired a lawyer? Not good.
#4. It's now clear that Jr. wasn't on the list that Rahm Emanuel submitted to Blago of preferred Senate candidates, which means that either Team Obama didn't feel that Jackson could win the seat statewide, or that there is some other, unknown problem between the Jackson and Obama camps. Either way, not good news.
#3. Jackson might actually be innocent. In fact, the latest news is that he's been informing on Blago for a decade. But if that's the case, one has to wonder how his reputation within his own community might suffer from finding out that he's a federal rat.
#2. Jackson might not be so innocent. If he has known what Blago wanted in exchange for appointments for ten years, why did he allow his emissaries to create even the impression that he was willing to pay the piper? The chain of events certainly makes the Congressman look naive. And naivete does not a Senator make.
#1. No matter how you slice it, Jackson's possibilities of becoming a Senator, already slim, have sunk to none. And with his prospects, probably go his influence with the incoming adminstration -- something he worked tirelessly during the campaign to cultivate.
On Friday, in his first public comments since his arrest, the governor did not rule out the possibility he might resign. As he left the federal courthouse after a visit to the pretrial services office, a reporter asked the governor, "Do you have anything to say to the people of Illinois?"
He replied, "I will at the appropriate time. Absolutely."
Also Friday, Blagojevich retained the lawyer who defended R&B singer R. Kelly and disgraced media mogul Conrad Black to represent him in his criminal case.
Ed Genson, one of Chicago's top criminal-defense attorneys, said he was assembling a team of lawyers to assist with the case. Genson typically doesn't represent clients who plan to plead guilty.
At least Blago didn't pee on anyone ... that we know of ...
What if you had an investment firm that really was a giant Ponzi scheme? Well... the Wall Street Journal reports:
Bernard L. Madoff, a former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market and a force in Wall Street trading for nearly 50 years, was arrested by federal agents Thursday, a day after his sons turned him in for running what they said their father called "a giant Ponzi scheme."
The Securities and Exchange Commission, in a civil complaint, said it was an ongoing $50 billion swindle, and asked a judge to seize the firm and its assets. "Our complaint alleges a stunning fraud that appears to be of epic proportions," said Andrew M. Calamari, associate director of enforcement in the SEC's Enforcement Bureau. ...
Madoff's firm is known as securities broker dealer, but he also runs a separate investment advisory business which had more than $17 billion in assets under management, federal authorities said, citing two unidentified employees and a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Madoff counted several large hedge fund investment firms as clients, along with some European banks, so if his firm has lost more than $50 billion, the impact could be widespread.
On Wednesday, Madoff told two senior employees that he was "finished," that he had "absolutely nothing," that "it's all just one big lie," and that it was "basically, a giant Ponzi scheme," federal prosecutors said in their statement.
According to a criminal complaint filed on Thursday and cited by the Journal, Madoff "deceived investors by operating a securities business in which he traded and lost investor money, and then paid certain investors purported returns on investment with the principal received from other, different investors, which resulted in losses of approximately billions of dollars."
Madoff also said his business was insolvent, and that it had been for years, estimating losses to be at least $50 billion, prosecutors alleged, again citing the two unidentified employees.
According to the complaint, Madoff told one of his senior employees that clients were seeking about $7 billion in redemptions and that "he was struggling to obtain the liquidity necessary to meet those obligations." The employees believed the firm had about $17 billion under management.
Earlier this week, Madoff also allegedly told an employee that he wanted to pay bonuses to employees this month-- earlier than usual. Later, two employees who met with Madoff at his apartment were told that the business was a giant Ponzi scheme, which they took to mean that Madoff "for years been paying returns to investors out of principal received from other, different investors." Madoff allegedly told those employees that the firm was insolvent, according to the complaint.
And in case you missed it in the first link, those "senior employees" ... who also turned him in to the feds ... were his SONS. And the voluble Mr. Cramer adds:
Just what this market needed: the highest profile hedge-fund scandal I may have ever seen -- Bernie Madoff's arrest today. This guy ran $17 billion for the wealthiest of the wealthy and the most clued-in of customers. $17 billion! As my friend Doug Kass says, this one is bigger than Bayou -- heck, bigger than Boesky.
When Boesky got busted, there was an instant backlash by the public against the securities markets -- people figured they were rigged and then they got confirmation.
With the nonsense we see daily with the Exxons and the Chevrons and the JP Morgans and the Goldmans and the last hour of trading with the Pro Ultra ETFs, it is easy to believe that things can be rigged and I believe they are in a bizarrely legal way blessed by the SEC.
Jesse Jackson Jr. just completed a press conference in which he emphatically defended himself against the taint of Blago's corruption, saying he believed, and still believes, that he would be the most qualified and best candidate for the U.S. Senate based on his record, including 13 years in the House of Representatives, and he said that at no time did he engage in "pay to play" politics with Blago. A couple of key lines:
JJ said he:
Met with Gov. Blagojevich for the first time in four years on Tuesday, and presented my qualifications and my record. ... The media saw me enter Gov. Blagojevich's office. ... The media saw me exit the governor's office.
He added that he did not send an emissary with the explicit or implicit message to Blago that he would fundraise for the governor in exchange for an appointment. Said Jax:
I had no involvement whatsoever in any wrongdoing. I did not initate or authorize anyone to promise Gov. Blagojevich anything on my behalf
It was clear from the presentation that Jr. is still very much stalking that Senate seat, and that he hopes to cleanse himself enough to get Obama to not stand in his way. He still wants it, baby.
Old Dixie still rules when it comes to corruption. As of 2006, according to Corporate Crime Reporter:
Louisiana is the most corrupt state in the nation.
That’s according to an analysis of government data released today by Corporate Crime Reporter.
Louisiana (1), Mississippi (2), Kentucky (3), Alabama (4) and Ohio (5) are the top five most corrupt states in the country, according to the analysis.
Rounding out the top ten are Illinois (6), Pennsylvania (7), Florida (8), New Jersey (9), and New York (10).
“If you type the word ‘corruption’ into Google News, the vast majority of news stories that come up are from overseas,” said Russell Mokhiber, editor of Corporate Crime Reporter, a print weekly legal newsletter based in Washington, D.C. “But public corruption is booming right here in the USA.”
“There have been more than 20,000 public officials and private citizens convicted of public corruption over the past two decades,” Mokhiber said. “That’s an average of 1,000 a year for the last twenty years.”
Interestingly enough, the site relies on statistics from the Bush Justice Department's Public Integrity Sector, which strangely, hasn't completed a report since. And many of the states in the corruption "top five" are also tops in federal spending per capita vs. tax dollars paid in: particularly the southern states of Mississippi (#2), Alabama (#7) and Kentucky (#9).
U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., Illinois State Senate President Emil Jones and the Rev. Jesse Jackson celebrate together following Barack Obama's Democratic presidential nomination acceptance speech Thursday, Aug. 28, 2008 in Denver. Abdon Pallasch photo. Courtesy of Flickr
The media is going to have a pre-Christmas feast on the carcasses of Rod Blagojevich and the newly named "Senate Candidate #5," Jesse Jackson Jr., the latter in no small part because only he, of the two, can be tied closely to Barack Obama.
I spoke with a source close to JJJr, who also has known Barack since the days of Jr.'s run for Congress. The source told me that the relationship really goes through Michelle, who was close enough to Jr.'s sister, Santita, that Jr. used to say Michelle and Santita, as teens, would "babysit" him and his younger siblings. The source said that while the women are, or were, close, Jr. and Obama were more "political friends" than actual ones. The quote was, "they weren't going to each other's houses, or anything like that..."
So why, I asked, might Obama NOT want Jr. to have his Senate seat, as the related passages in the Blago indictment implies? My source, who is not as close to Jr. as in recent years, but who still knows all the players, says the only obvious reason would be Jesse Jackson Sr.'s antics during the campaign, and the potential for continued embarassment should Jr. ascend to the Senate. Or maybe he just doesn't think he's qualified. Otherwise, Jr.'s stumping for Obama, as his national co-chair, was pretty thorough (he was in Miami a few days before E-day, and did a great job I have to say...) And Jr. has been very openly lobbying for the seat, in what could be called tacky fashion. If you go by the indictment, he wanted it really, really bad. From the FBI affidavit:
Later on November 10, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH and Advisor A discussed the open Senate seat. Among other things, ROD BLAGOJEVICH raised the issue of whether the President-elect could help get ROD BLAGOJEVICH's wife on "paid corporate boards right now." Advisor A responded that he "think[s] they could" and that a "President elect . . . can do almost anything he sets his mind to." ROD BLAGOJEVICH states that he will appoint "[Senate Candidate 1] . . . but if they feel like they can do this and not fucking give me anything . . . then I'll fucking go [Senate Candidate 5]." (Senate Candidate 5 is publicly reported to be interested in the open Senate seat). ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated that if his wife could get on some corporate boards and "picks up another 150 grand a year or whatever" it would help ROD BLAGOJEVICH get through the next several years as Governor.
Meanwhile, among the questions that remain: where was Jesse going to get the up-front money, and who was going to deliver on the back end? What is clear is that Jr. comes across in the indcitment as both shady AND untrustworthy, even to an alleged crook like Blago:
"ROD BLAGOJEVICH told Fundraiser A to tell Individual D that ROD BLAGOJEVICH had a problem with Senate Candidate 5 just promising to help ROD BLAGOJEVICH because ROD BLAGOJEVICH had a prior bad experience with Senate Candidate 5 not keeping his word."
And yet, the indictment claims that Blago felt fairly confident that Jr. could come up with the dough:
"On December 4, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH spoke to Advisor B and informed Advisor B that he was giving Senate Candidate 5 greater consideration for the Senate seat because, among other reasons, if ROD BLAGOJEVICH ran for re-election Senate Candidate 5 would "raise[] money" for ROD BLAGOJEVICH, although ROD BLAGOJEVICH said he might "get some (money) up front, maybe" from Senate Candidate 5 to insure Senate Candidate 5 kept his promise about raising money for ROD BLAGOJEVICH. (In a recorded conversation on October 31, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH described an earlier approach by an associate of Senate Candidate Five as follows: "We were approached 'pay to play.' That, you know, he'd raise me 500 grand. An emissary came. Then the other guy would raise a million, if I made him (Senate Candidate 5) a Senator.")"
Could the "other guy" be Dear Old Dad? Or could the "other guy" be Illinois State Sen. President Emil Jones, the political ally whom Obama called during the presidential campaign to push him to switch his vote in favor of an ethics bill Blago opposed? He had been the chief suspect in blogland before today's JJJ bombshell. Either way, this whole mess doesn't say much that's good about either Illinois politics, or Illinois Black politics...
Anyhoo, watch JJ's interview with ABC News here. So far, he denies that he was involved in pay to play:
"It is impossible for someone on my behalf to have a conversation that would suggest any type of quid pro quo or any payments or offers," Jackson told ABC News. "An impossibility to an absolute certainty."
Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. is “Senate Candidate 5,” who — through an emissary — allegedly offered to raise money for Gov. Blagojevich in return for being appointed as Barack Obama’s replacement in the U.S. Senate, sources tell the Chicago Sun-Times.
The alleged offering was caught on a wiretap secretly planted by the feds.
“In a recorded conversation on October 31, 2008, Rod Blagojevich described an earlier approach by an associate of Senate Candidate Five as follows: “We were approached ‘pay to play.’ That, you know, he’d raise me 500 grand. An emissary came. Then the other guy would raise a million, if I made him (Senate Candidate 5) a Senator,” the affadavit accompanying Blagojevich's criminal complaint states.
Speculation has centered that Jackson is Senate Candidate 5 since the complaint was released Tuesday. Jackson, who has aggressively campaigned for the Senate seat, told ABC news that he has not “been informed” by federal prosecutors that he is Senate Candidate 5.
Jackson said he is “not a target” of any probe, but the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago has sought to interview him.
“I would like to do that as quickly as possible,” Jackson said.
In a statement last night, Jackson said, “I reject and denounce pay-to-play politics and have no involvement whatsoever in any wrongdoing.”
JJJ's name has been batted around the blogosphere, but it had been kind of knocked down yesterday. Now, it's back. Sounds like Dear Old Dad was handing down the family business. The inevitable conclusion here is that Jesse Sr. may have been the third party who would raise $1 million for Blago after Jr. came up with the first $500k. Nasty stuff. Looks like Marc Ambinder had it right, while TNR and TSG (and myself) got it wrong.
Sorry, Joe Scarborough. The only ties between Barack Obama and Blago are firmly in the negative. From this morning's New York Times:
In a sequence of events that neatly captures the contradictions of Barack Obama’s rise through Illinois politics, a phone call he made three months ago to urge passage of a state ethics bill indirectly contributed to the downfall of a fellow Democrat he twice supported, Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich.
Mr. Obama placed the call to his political mentor, Emil Jones Jr., president of the Illinois Senate. Mr. Jones was a critic of the legislation, which sought to curb the influence of money in politics, as was Mr. Blagojevich, who had vetoed it. But after the call from Mr. Obama, the Senate overrode the veto, prompting the governor to press state contractors for campaign contributions before the law’s restrictions could take effect on Jan. 1, prosecutors say.
Tipped off to Mr. Blagojevich’s efforts, federal agents obtained wiretaps for his phones and eventually overheard what they say was scheming by the governor to profit from his appointment of a successor to the United States Senate seat being vacated by President-elect Obama. One official whose name has long been mentioned in Chicago political circles as a potential successor is Mr. Jones, a machine politician who was viewed as a roadblock to ethics reform but is friendly with Mr. Obama.
Beyond the irony of its outcome, Mr. Obama’s unusual decision to inject himself into a statewide issue during the height of his presidential campaign was a reminder that despite his historic ascendancy to the White House, he has never quite escaped the murky and insular world of Illinois politics. It is a world he has long navigated, to the consternation of his critics, by engaging in a kind of realpolitik, Chicago-style, which allowed him to draw strength from his relationships with important players without becoming compromised by their many weaknesses.
By the time Mr. Obama intervened on the ethics measure, his relationship with Mr. Blagojevich, always defined more by political proximity than by personal chemistry, had cooled as the governor became increasingly engulfed in legal troubles. There is nothing in the criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday to indicate that Mr. Obama knew anything about plans to seek money and favors in exchange for his Senate seat; he has never been implicated in any other “pay to play” cases that have emerged from the long-running investigation of the Blagojevich administration.
The article reveals Obama's penchant for some relationships of political convenience, some common ties between himself, Blago and Tony Rezko, and Blagojevich's presidential ambitions (to run in 2008, no less) but mostly, it illustrates how distant, and cool, the relationship between Obama and the fallen Illinois governor has long been. Not exactly the stuff of Whitewater. Again, sorry, Joe Scarborough. I know you were hoping for a major takedown of "the chosen one."
Moreover, it may have been Rahm Emanuel, Obama's newly minted chief of staff, who tipped off the feds about Blago's dirty dealings.
The parlor game begins. And whoever this guy is, he's in big trouble, because apparently he was willing to play ball with Blago on some monetary love in exchange for Obama's Senate Seat.
Later on November 10, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH and Advisor A discussed the open Senate seat. Among other things, ROD BLAGOJEVICH raised the issue of whether the President-elect could help get ROD BLAGOJEVICH's wife on "paid corporate boards right now." Advisor A responded that he "think[s] they could" and that a President elect . . . can do almost anything he sets his mind to." ROD BLAGOJEVICH states that he will appoint "[Senate Candidate 1] . . . but if they feel like they can do this and not fucking give me anything . . . then I'll fucking go [Senate Candidate 5]." (Senate Candidate 5 is publicly reported to be interested in the open Senate seat). ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated that if his wife could get on some corporate boards and "picks up another 150 grand a year or whatever" it would help ROD BLAGOJEVICH get through the next several years as Governor.
In other words -- if Blago doesn't get what he wanted, then he'd stiff the PEOTUS by appointing someone he didn't like -- Senate Candidate 5.
Just last week, on December 4, Blagojevich allegedly told an advisor that he might "get some (money) up front, maybe" from Senate Candidate 5, if he named Senate Candidate 5 to the Senate seat, to insure that Senate Candidate 5 kept a promise about raising money for Blagojevich if he ran for re-election. In a recorded conversation on October 31, Blagojevich claimed he was approached by an associate of Senate Candidate 5 as follows: "We were approached 'pay to play.' That, you know, he'd raise 500 grand. An emissary came. Then the other guy would raise a million, if I made him (Senate Candidate 5) a Senator."
On November 7, while talking on the phone about the Senate seat with Harris and an advisor, Blagojevich said he needed to consider his family and that he is "financially" hurting, the affidavit states. Harris allegedly said that they were considering what would help the "financial security" of the Blagojevich family and what will keep Blagojevich "politically viable." Blagojevich stated, "I want to make money," adding later that he is interested in making $250,000 to $300,000 a year, the complaint alleges.
So who are the anonymous candidates? ABC News IDs "Senate Candidate #1" as Obama pal Valerie Jarret:
The Senate candidate whom Blago at one point thought that President-elect Obama seemed most likely to be supporting -- friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett, who later took herself out of the running and will be a White House Senior Adviser -- is discussed, as "Senate Candidate 1."
Jarrett referred ABC News to the Obama Transition Team for comment; they did not have one.
Ultimately, it appears that neither PEBO nor Jarrett were willing to discuss any of Blago's various notions of how he could sell them the seat. Talking to his chief of staff on November 11, Blago said he knew PEBO wanted Jarrett to get the Senate seat but “they’re not willing to give me anything except appreciation. F--- them."
Which leaves the burning question of who is "Senate Candidate #5"?
Marc Ambinder speculates that it's Jesse Jackson Junior, given the timing of a meeting he had with Blago. But that doesn't seem right to me, since it's also clear from the complaint that Blago believed Obama was opposed to Candidate 5. I can't think of any reason why Obama would oppose Jesse Junior moving over to the Senate. As I reported for the print mag early this year, Obama's relationship with Jesse Senior may be fraught, but he's actually fairly close to Jesse Junior. And, presumably, their relationship grew stronger over the course of the campaign, during which Jesse Junior did yeoman's work for Obama, the least of which was slapping down his dad when he did something against Obama's interests.
The Smoking Gun, meanwhile, says that Candidate 5 is Emil Jones. Obama's relationship with Jones (who, btw, is a sworn enemy of Jesse Junior's) is much, much more complex. Yes, Obama famously cultivated Jones as his political godfather in the State Senate, but that's always seemed like one of those relationships that Obama was happy to leave behind in Springfield. Given some of the baggage that comes with Jones's old-school, machine ways--a number of his family members are on the public payroll, and he's worked hard to make sure his son inherits his legislative seat--I could see how Obama might not want Jones in Washington. What's more, Brad Plumer calls my attention to this post from the Capitol Fax blog, which points out that Jones was mentioned by Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed a few days after Blago discussed leaking Candidate 5's name, and that Jones has a huge war chest, so it wouldn't be hard for him to come up with $500k.
Interesting theory, and ont that, like the whole Rev. Wright mess, would be awkward for Obama, though no threat to him legally or in the end, politically, since Obama has done the man no favors and clearly, from the Blago tapes, doesnt' want this person in the Senate. Ben Smith of Politico adds more clues:
Here's what we know. Candidate 5 is:
-"publicly reported to be interested in the open Senate seat" - not who Blagojevich thought Obama wanted - not someone with whom, by November 10, Blagojevich had a "long, productive discussion" - someone with fundraising wherewithal who could produce something "tangible up front" - someone Blago was "getting a lot of pressure" not to appoint - someone with whom Blago had "a prior bad experience...not keeping his word"
And concludes:
The complaint also says that on November 10, Blagojevich told an advisor to leak to the Sun-Times's Michael Sneed that Blagojevich "is seriously considering Senate Candidate 5 for the open Senate seat" and that the advisor agreed to call the Sun-Times to leak the story, apparently false, that Blagojevich end of the conversation Advisor A agreed to call the Sun Times columnist to leak the story had a “long, productive discussion” with Candidate 5.
Sneed hears Gov. Blago, who will choose Obama's replacement in the U.S. Senate, privately feels there may be only one choice that makes sense: His buddy, outgoing Senate President Emil Jones.
The Illinois governor was taken into custody this morning in a widening "pay to play" scandal that now includes the appointment of Barack Obama's successor in the Senate. From the Tribune (which we hope survives the bankruptcy, along with the Cubs...):
The stunning, early morning visit by authorities to the governor's North Side home came amid revelations that federal investigators had recorded the governor with the cooperation of a longtime confidant and had begun to focus on the possibility that the process of choosing a Senate successor to President-elect Barack Obama could be tainted by pay-to-play politics.
Blagojevich was taken into custody hours after the Tribune reported that the investigation into allegations of pay-to-play politics within his administration had been expanded to include his pending choice of a Senate replacement for Obama. The Democratic governor has said he expects to make a decision on the state's next senator in weeks.
Sources told the Tribune that investigators intensified their investigation into Blagojevich amid concerns that the process of choosing a new senator could be tainted. The actions by federal authorities came a day before Blagojevich's 52nd birthday.
The Tribune previously disclosed that federal investigators had recordings of Blagojevich. Those recordings were aided by the cooperation of longtime Blagojevich confidant and former congressional chief of staff John Wyma.
On Monday, Blagojevich said he has done nothing wrong in his stewardship of the state and challenged critics to record him because his discussions were "always lawful."
The governor's chief of staff, John Harris, was also arrested. More:
Updated at 9:17 a.m.: Blagojevich also was alleged to be using a favors list, made up largely of individuals and firms that have state contracts or received taxpayer benefits, from which to conduct a $2.5 million fundraising drive before year's end.
Even Blagojevich's recently announced $1.8 billion plan for new interchanges and "green lanes" on the Illinois Tollway was subject to corruption, prosecutors alleged.
The complaint repeatedly references conversations secretly recorded by federal authorities.
The criminal complaint alleges Blagojevich expected an unnamed highway concrete contractor to raise a half-million dollars for his campaign fund in exchange for state money for the tollway project. "If they don't perform, (expletive) 'em," Blagojevich said, according to the complaint.
Questions, including about the secret taping of the governor, will be many... And what does this mean for Jesse Jackson Jr. and the other contenders for Obama's seat? Tick tock...
Hm ... anti-corruption crusading former New York Governor Elliot Spitzer was taken down in a prostitution scandal by his bank at an opportune time for Wall Street. ... now that the feds have approved a $700 billion bailout for Wall Street, Spitzer's "crimes" aren't such a big deal... In fact, they're not even crimes:
ALBANY — Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer will not be charged with any crime for his patronage of a prostitution ring, federal investigators announced on Thursday.
The announcement was made by the office of Michael J. Garcia, the United States attorney in Manhattan.
Mr. Spitzer announced his resignation in March two days after The New York Times reported his involvement in a high-priced prostitution ring, the Emperors Club V.I.P.
Garcia, a Bush appointee, got an admission from Spitzer that he patronized the call girl ring, and sent him on his way. Interesting...
The economic crisis demands that we understand John McCain's attitudes about economic oversight and corporate influence in federal regulation. Nothing illustrates the danger of his approach more clearly than his central role in the savings and loan scandal of the late '80s and early '90s.
The bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee launched investigations and formally reprimanded Senator McCain for his role in the scandal -- the first such Senator to receive a major party nomination for president.
John McCain was accused of improperly aiding his political patron, Charles Keating, chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. At the heart of the scandal was Keating's Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which took advantage of deregulation in the 1980s to make risky investments with its depositors' money. McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating with federal regulators tasked with preventing banking fraud, and championed legislation to delay regulation of the savings and loan industry -- actions that allowed Keating to continue his fraud at an incredible cost to taxpayers.
When the savings and loan industry collapsed, Keating's failed company put taxpayers on the hook for $3.4 billion and more than 20,000 Americans lost their savings. John McCain was reprimanded by the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee, but the ultimate cost of the crisis to American taxpayers reached more than $120 billion.
The Keating scandal is eerily similar to today's credit crisis, where a lack of regulation and cozy relationships between the financial industry and Congress has allowed banks to make risky loans and profit by bending the rules. And in both cases, John McCain's judgment and values have placed him on the wrong side of history.
A Huffpo commenter caught this one, from way back on September 6th, before AIG and WaMu went in the drink. It was the 11th bank failure in the U.S.: Nevada's Silver State bank... From the AP:
Nevada State Bank of Las Vegas will take over the insured deposits of Silver State -- which had $2 billion in assets and $1.7 billion in deposits at the end of June. AP reports that "[Silver State's] branches will reopen Monday as offices of Nevada State Bank in Nevada and National Bank of Arizona in Arizona."
"John McCain's son, Andrew," who is also CFO of his mom's beer distributorship, "sat on the boards of Silver State Bank and of its parent, Silver State Bancorp, starting in February but resigned in July citing 'personal reasons.' Andrew McCain also was a member of the bank's audit committee, responsible for oversight of the company's accounting," according to AP.
Taxpayers got off relatively cheaply bailing out Andrew's former colleagues. The failure -- which was caused by "poor-quality loans primarily related to real estate development" -- will cost the FDIC deposit insurance fund between "$450 million [and] $550 million
Andrew is McCain's adopted son from his first marriage, btw. According to The Street:
Andrew McCain, the adopted son of Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, was on Silver State's board for five months before he stepped down in July.
As of June 30, Silver State had total assets of $2 billion and deposits of $1.7 billion. Nevada State Bank agreed to purchase the insured deposits for a premium of 1.3%. At the time of the bank's closing, there were approximately $20 million in uninsured deposits held in roughly 500 accounts that potentially exceeded the insurance limits.
Silver State also had around $700 million in brokered deposits that weren't included in the takeover. The FDIC will pay the brokers directly for the amount of their insured funds.
No wonder the FDIC is running out of cash...
So why does this sound so familiar? Maybe because Republicans have been running this scam for decades. There's Jebbie and Neil Bush:
Between 1981 and 1989, when George Bush finally announced that there was a Savings and Loan Crisis to the world, the Reagan/Bush administration worked to cover up Savings and Loan problems by reducing the number and depth of examinations required of S&Ls as well as attacking political opponents who were sounding early alarms about the S&L industry. Industry insiders were aware of significant S&L problems as early 1986 that they felt would require a bailout. This information was kept from the media until after Bush had won the 1988 elections.
Jeb Bush defaulted on a $4.56 million loan from Broward Federal Savings in Sunrise, Florida. After federal regulators closed the S&L, the office building that Jeb used the $4.56 million to finance was reappraised by the regulators at $500,000, which Bush and his partners paid. The taxpayers had to pay back the remaining 4 million plus dollars.
Neil Bush was the most widely targeted member of the Bush family by the press in the S&L scandal. Neil became director of Silverado Savings and Loan at the age of 30 in 1985. Three years later the institution was belly up at a cost of $1.6 billion to tax payers to bail out.
The basic actions of Neil Bush in the S&L scandal are as follows:
Neil received a $100,000 "loan" from Ken Good, of Good International, with no obligation to pay any of the money back.
Good was a large shareholder in JNB Explorations, Neil Bush's oil-exploration company.
Neil failed to disclose this conflict-of-interest when loans were given to Good from Silverado, because the money was to be used in joint venture with his own JNB. This was in essence giving himself a loan from Silverado through a third party.
Neil then helped Silverado S&L approve Good International for a $900,000 line of credit.
Good defaulted on a total $32 million in loans from Silverado.
During this time Neil Bush did not disclose that $3 million of the $32 million that Good was defaulting on was actually for investment in JNB, his own company.
Good subsequently raised Bush's JNB salary from $75,000 to $125,000 and granted him a $22,500 bonus.
Neil Bush maintained that he did not see how this constituted a conflict of interest.
Neil approved $106 million in Silverado loans to another JNB investor, Bill Walters.
Neil also never formally disclosed his relationship with Walters and Walters also defaulted on his loans, all $106 million of them.
Neil Bush was charged with criminal wrongdoing in the case and ended up paying $50,000 to settle out of court. The chief of Silverado S&L was sentenced to 3.5 years in jail for pleading guilty to $8.7 million in theft. (Keep in mind that you can get more jail time for holding up a gas station for $50.)
And of course, there's the gold standard of S&L scams, featuring none other than Andrew's dad, John McCain, who got caught up in a little thing called the "Keating Five":
It all started in March 1987. Charles H Keating Jr., the flamboyant developer and anti-porn crusader, needed help. The government was poised to seize Lincoln Savings and Loan, a freewheeling subsidiary of Keating's American Continental Corp.
As federal auditors crawled all over Lincoln, Keating was not content to wait and hope for the best. He'd spread a lot of money around Washington, and it was time to call in his chits.
One of his first stops was Sen. Dennis DeConcini. The Arizona lawmaker was one of Keating's most loyal friends in Congress, and for good reason. Keating had given thousands of dollars to DeConcini's campaigns. At one point, DeConcini even pushed Keating for ambassador to the Bahamas, where Keating owned a luxurious vacation home.
Now Keating had a job for DeConcini. He wanted him to organize a meeting with the regulators. The message: Get off Lincoln's back. Eventually, DeConcini would set up a meeting between five senators and the regulators. One of them was John McCain.
McCain knew Keating well. His ties to the home builder dated to 1981, when the two men met at a Navy League dinner where McCain was the speaker.
After the speech, Keating walked up to McCain and told him that he, too, was a Navy flier, and that he greatly respected McCain's war record. He met McCain's wife and family. The two men became friends.
Charlie Keating always took care of his friends, especially those in politics. John McCain was no exception.
In 1982, during McCain's first run for the House, Keating held a fund-raiser for him, collecting more than $11,000 from 40 employees of American Continental Corp. McCain would spend more than $550,000 to win the primary and the general election.
In 1983, during McCain's second House race, Keating hosted a $1,000-a-plate dinner for McCain, though he had no serious competition and coasted into his second term. When McCain pushed for the Senate in 1986, Keating was there with more than $50,000.
By 1987, McCain had received about $112,000 in political contributions from Keating and his associates.
McCain had also carried a little water for Keating in Washington. While in the House, McCain, along with a majority of representatives, co-sponsored a resolution to delay new regulations designed to curb risky investments by thrifts like Lincoln.
Despite his history with Keating, McCain was hesitant about intervening. At that point, he had been in the Senate only three months. DeConcini wanted McCain to fly to San Francisco with him and talk to the regulators. McCain refused.
Keating would not be dissuaded.
On March 24 at 9:30 a.m., Keating went to DeConcini's office and asked him if the meeting with the regulators was on. DeConcini told Keating that McCain was nervous.
''McCain's a wimp,'' Keating replied, according to the book Trust Me, by Michael Binstein and Charles Bowden. ''We'll go talk to him.''
Keating had other business on the Hill and did not reach McCain's office until 1:30. A DeConcini staffer had already told McCain about the wimp comment.
When he arrived, Keating presented McCain with a laundry list of demands for the regulators.
McCain told Keating that he would attend the meeting and find out whether Keating was getting treated fairly, but that was all.
''Keating gave me the clear impression that he expected me to do more,'' McCain said later. ''He had several specific requests.''
When Keating questioned his courage, McCain invoked his POW experience. He told Keating that he didn't spend 5 1/2 years in the Hanoi Hilton to be called a coward.
The two argued, then Keating stormed out.
Despite the dust-up, McCain attended not one but two meetings with the regulators. McCain later explained that he thought it was the right thing to do, because Keating was a constituent.
McCain would live to regret it.
(For a full airing of McCain's cynicism in the 1980s version of Teapot Dome, click here.)
And there are also the financial ties between Keating and one Cindy Hensley McCain, something Mac apparently doesn't like being asked about...
In spinning his side of the Keating story, McCain adopted the blanket defense that Keating was a constituent and that he had every right to ask his senators for help. In attending the meetings, McCain said, he simply wanted to make sure that Keating was treated like any other constituent.
Keating was far more than a constituent to McCain, however.
On Oct. 8, 1989, The Republic revealed that McCain's wife and her father had invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in April 1986, a year before McCain met with the regulators.
...When the story broke, McCain did nothing to help himself. When reporters first called him, he was furious. Caught out in the open, the former fighter pilot let go with a barrage of cover fire. Sen. Hothead came out in all his glory.
''You're a liar,''' McCain snapped Sept. 29 when a Republic reporter asked him about business ties between his wife and Keating.
''That's the spouse's involvement, you idiot,'' McCain said later in the same conversation. ''You do understand English, don't you?''
He also belittled the reporters when they asked about his wife's ties to Keating.
''It's up to you to find that out, kids.''
And then he played the POW card.
''Even the Vietnamese didn't question my ethics,'' McCain said.
The paper ran the story a few days later. At a news conference, McCain was a changed man. He stood calmly for 90 minutes and answered every question.
The Senate Ethics Committee will seek a detailed study of a real estate partnership involving developer Charles Keating Jr. and the wife of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), according to Senate sources.
Involved is an investment by Cindy McCain and her father, James Hensley, in a $15-million Phoenix, Ariz., shopping center. The $359,000 investment, made through a Hensley company subsidiary in which Cindy McCain had 41 percent ownership and her father 51 percent, makes them the largest single investors in the project originally financed, built and managed by Keating. The investment by the senator's relatives was made in 1986 after Keating was already in a bitter feud with federal regulators alarmed over his operation of Lincoln Savings and Loan.
And that's some straight talk for you, my friends.
The National Enquirer promises more juicy revelations about Sarah Palin in its current issue, stemming from leaks pouring forth via Troopergate. The tab is also claiming credit for forcing Palin to go public with the preggers news:
Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin attempted to quietly have her daughter Bristol get married before news of her pregnancy leaked out, the NATIONAL ENQUIRER is reporting exclusively in its new issue.
Palin planned for the wedding to take place right after the Republican National Convention and then she was going to announce the pregnancy.
But Bristol, 17, refused to go along with the plan and that sparked a mother-daughter showdown over the failed coverup.
The ultra-conservative governor’s announcement about her daughter’s pregnancy came hours after The ENQUIRER informed her representatives and family members of Levi Johnston, the father of Bristol’s child, that we were aware of the pregnancy and were going to break the news.
In a preemptive strike Palin released the news, creating political shockwaves.
They're also claiming that the feud between Palin and her ex-brother in law, which is at the heart of Troopergate (she tried to get him fired and allegedly leaned on a state employee to do so, and now is refusing to testify in the state probe...) is threatening to spill more gossip gack into the political waters. Sit back kids, this one's only in the second inning...
Check out the latest issue of Us Weekly, available Wednesday, for more on the bizarre and false conspiracy and photos that led to the governor's stunning admission about her teenage daughter, what Palin is like as a person, and why Bristol's high school sweet Levi Johnston may not be ready for fatherhood.
Uh oh...
So who cares what US Weekly writes? Well, as the Reds point out via an email circulating the tab from former Clinton communications guy Mike Neschis: "Us Weekly has 12 million, mostly female readers)"
Let's see how all the "ethcandal" plays out in the real world...
In 2006, I made a serious error in judgment and conducted myself in a way that was disloyal to my family and to my core beliefs. I recognized my mistake and I told my wife that I had a liaison with another woman, and I asked for her forgiveness. Although I was honest in every painful detail with my family, I did not tell the public. When a supermarket tabloid told a version of the story, I used the fact that the story contained many falsities to deny it. But being 99% honest is no longer enough. ...
... It is inadequate to say to the people who believed in me that I am sorry, as it is inadequate to say to the people who love me that I am sorry. In the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic. If you want to beat me up – feel free. You cannot beat me up more than I have already beaten up myself. I have been stripped bare and will now work with everything I have to help my family and others who need my help. ...
On June 4, 2007, CNN hosted a candidates' forum where religious questions were the focus. Edwards was asked about sin. Transcript at the jump.
What is the biggest sin you've ever committed? Are you willing -- are you willing to say? You can take a pass, sir, as you know.
EDWARDS: Just between you and me?
(LAUGHTER)
O'BRIEN: Just between you and me and the 1,300 people in the crowd.
EDWARDS: I'd have a very hard time telling you one thing, one specific sin.
(APPLAUSE)
If I've had a day -- I turn 54 years old this Sunday -- and if I've had a day in my 54 years where I haven't sinned multiple times, I would be amazed. I believe I have. I sin every single day. We are all sinners. We all fall short, which is why we have to ask for forgiveness from the Lord. I can't -- to try to identify one particular sin that was worse or more extreme than the others, the list is too long.
Top 5 people who are glad John Edwards is the top story today
John Edwards' sex life is one of the least interesting stories I can think of off the top of my head. But that doesn't mean that some people out there in the world aren't damned happy he has admitted to cheating on Elizabeth with a blonde filmmaker type lady who has a baby girl that might be his. Let's count them down, in no particular order...
1. John McCain -
McCain dodges a media bullet today (something he's kind of used to at this point) since now that Edwards is the story, no one cares that he has had to return $50,000 in ill-gotten campaign contributions from a Jordanian national who's the business partner of a shady McCain bundler in Florida named Harry Sargeant.
The Post first reported on Sargeant's efforts on behalf of McCain and other political candidates earlier this week. McCain's campaign has credited Sargeant for collecting dozens of $2,300 and $4,600 checks, many of them from ordinary families in California. The manager of several Taco Bell restaurants, an auto mechanic, and the one-time owners of a liquor store all wrote big checks, even though many were not registered to vote.
Sargeant told The New York Times this morning that he at times left the task of collecting the checks to a longtime business partner, Mustafa Abu Naba'a. The problem with that is that Abu Naba'a is not an American citizen. According to court records, Abu Naba'a is a dual citizen of Jordan and the Dominican Republic.
The law on this question appears to be unclear, said Fred Wertheimer, a campaign finance expert who runs the advocacy group, Democracy 21.
"There's probably very little law on this," Wertheimer said. "If it is not illegal for a foreign national to bundle checks, it ought to be, since it's illegal for a foreign national to make contributions in the first place."
2. Barack Obama -
Barack is finally taking some time off this week, taking advantage of the Olympics to head to Hawaii on vacation. Maybe now that Edwards is the story (and he's not available to comment on it today,) he can take some time to reduce his media profile and come out fresh before the campaign. Also, the Edwards problem helps to highlight his happy, stable marriage to Michelle -- and if the media cares to make the connection, the extent to which the other adulterous elephant in the room -- John McCain -- can relate to Senator Edwards, since McCain's current marriage is the product of cheating on his wife, and then dumping her for a Paris Hilton-style heiress with issues. (Flashback article of the day: High Infidelity)
3. China -
The Communist government in Beijing has detained White House reporters and staff, deported foreign protesters, and generally clamped down on its own population (but not the smog ... not much they can do about the smog...) during an Olympics that never should have been awarded to them, given their human rights record. The idiots who made that award are probably also breathing a sigh of relief today that at least until the Edwards fever breaks, no one will care what basic human rights they're violating. Instead, the foreigners will focus on bright, shiny objects like their cool architecture and snazzy technological wonders ... rather than on their police state:
The Beijing Olympics are themselves the perfect expression of this hybrid system. Through extraordinary feats of authoritarian governing, the Chinese state has built stunning new stadiums, highways and railways -- all in record time. It has razed whole neighborhoods, lined the streets with trees and flowers and, thanks to an "anti-spitting" campaign, cleaned the sidewalks of saliva. The Communist Party of China even tried to turn the muddy skies blue by ordering heavy industry to cease production for a month -- a sort of government-mandated general strike.
As for those Chinese citizens who might go off-message during the games -- Tibetan activists, human right campaigners, malcontent bloggers -- hundreds have been thrown in jail in recent months. Anyone still harboring protest plans will no doubt be caught on one of Beijing's 300,000 surveillance cameras and promptly nabbed by a security officer; there are reportedly 100,000 of them on Olympics duty.
The goal of all this central planning and spying is not to celebrate the glories of Communism, regardless of what China's governing party calls itself. It is to create the ultimate consumer cocoon for Visa cards, Adidas sneakers, China Mobile cell phones, McDonald's happy meals, Tsingtao beer, and UPS delivery -- to name just a few of the official Olympic sponsors. But the hottest new market of all is the surveillance itself. Unlike the police states of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, China has built a Police State 2.0, an entirely for-profit affair that is the latest frontier for the global Disaster Capitalism Complex.
4. Russia -
Hey, have you heard the one about Russia invading former Soviet captive state Georgia? Probably not, thanks to John Edwards' libido. Just in case, here's the story:
On the day the Olympic Games begin to promote unity and healthy competition between nations, Russia and the breakaway state of Georgia have made more brutal and disastrous headlines. It appears that Russia has invaded Georgia after a series of violent exchanges. Before Russia invaded Georgia, Georgia sent troops to the region of South Ossetia, a region that has been demanding independence from Georgia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. After Georgia's attack on South Ossetia, Russia sent troops to strike back at Georgia, putting the two on the brink of war.
Russia's invasion of Georgia is the latest climax of a conflict going back to the end of the Soviet Union. Georgia won it's independence as a result, but South Ossetia wanted it's independence from Georgia. South Ossetia has officially been labeled as a Georgia province, but they have sought to break away from the state.
Russia and Georgia have long conflicted over not only South Ossetia, but over Georgia's desire to be part of NATO. Russia has long opposed these efforts, and has also given support to South Ossetia's separatist forces that are fighting Georgia.
And last, but not least:
5. Hillary Clinton -
I'll bet it feels good to send her thoughts and prayers to some other humiliated wife for a change. And now she can finally klatch with someone other than Chelsea.
John Edwards caught dead to rights, but is this is love child? National Enquirer photo
John Edwards comes clean on the Rielle scandal, though he says, to quote Michael Jackson, "the kid is not my ... daughter..." ABC News got the scoop (after the National Enquirer did the leg work):
John Edwards repeatedly lied during his Presidential campaign about an extramarital affair with a novice filmmaker, the former Senator admitted to
In an interview for broadcast tonight on Nightline, Edwards told ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff he did have an affair with 44-year old Rielle Hunter, but said that he did not love her.
Edwards also denied he was the father of Hunter's baby girl, Frances Quinn, although the one-time Democratic Presidential candidate said he has not taken a paternity test.
Edwards said he knew he was not the father based on timing of the baby's birth on February 27, 2008. He said his affair ended too soon for him to have been the father.
A former campaign aide, Andrew Young, has said he was the father of the child.
No, it's not that Andrew Young ...
According to the Enquirer, young Mr. Young, who is married himself, had essentially taken the fall for being the father of Rielle's daughter, knowing it was really Edwards. I haven't been following the story too closely because ... well ... it was from the National Enquirer. Now that Edwards has admitted it, he's in for a media storm of Olympic proportions ... especially since only NBC has to pretend to be interested in the actual Olympics...
And this one includes high drama crap about Enquirer photogs chasing Edwards in and out of a Beverly Hills hotel, Exclusive! pics of Edwards holding the baby, hush money paid to Rielle and soon to come: an outpouring of outrage from Edwards staffers, blowhards on Capitol Hill, Republican campaign operatives etc., and sympathy for Elizabeth Edwards, who has inoperable cancer. It's just too juicy for the MSM to pass up, don't you know. (I'm thinking Fox News should impanel David Vitter and Larry Craig to discuss the ethcandal...) Edwards supposedly met Hunter at a bar and later hired her to produce campaign videos for him, at a hefty $114,000 fee. He says he told his wife about the affair in 2006, according to ABC News, and in truly cheesy fashion, told Nightline he specifically made sure Elizabeth's cancer was in remission before he got his groove on. Seriously. Of course since then Elizabeth came out of remission, and her cancer is now incurable...
Even worse for the former Senator, from the MSM point of view:
When the National Enquirer first reported the alleged Edwards-Hunter affair last October 11, Edwards, his campaign staff and Hunter vociferously denounced the report.
"The story is false, it's completely untrue, it's ridiculous," Edwards told reporters then.
He repeated his denials just two weeks ago.
Edwards today admitted the National Enquirer was correct when it reported he had visited Hunter at the Beverly Hills Hilton last month.
The former Senator said his wife had not known about the meeting.
And as you know, the media ... does NOT ... like to be lied to. I'm guessing what finally cornered Edwards was a lawsuit that followed the attempted reporter ambush in Beverly Hills:
NATIONAL ENQUIRER reporters Alan Butterfield and Alexander Hitchen filed a criminal complaint with the Beverly Hills Police Department on Thursday, July 24, charging that hotel security acted unlawfully while the reporters were trying to question the former senator.
Edwards now could be contacted by police to give an eyewitness account of what occurred.
Hotel security tried to stop the reporters from questioning Edwards in the basement of the hotel at approximately 2:40 a.m. Tuesday, July 22 after Edwards came off an elevator and appeared to be attempting to leave the hotel unseen.
His secret mistress Rielle Hunter and her baby were upstairs, and Edwards had just spent hours with them in a secret rendezvous.
As Butterfield and Hitchen tried to question Edwards, he ran down a hallway and ducked into a men's public bathroom. The reporters attempted to follow him in and Edwards pushed the door shut from inside.
I should think that Edwards couldn't have gotten far from that one without talking to authorities, and without somebody leaking to the "real" media.
Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have been reeeeeal quiet during this presidential campaign, possibly not wanting to throw Barack Obama off of his message of newness. Well, this morning, thanks to Jesse's verbal slip-up, they're back! Both men were on MSNBC this morning attempting to explain, mitigage and distance themselves from, Jesse's "cut of his nuts" gaffe on Fox. (FNC must just be killing themselves with laughs, watching MSNBC, their arch nemesis, forced to play video credited to "The O'Reilly Factor" over, and over, and over again...) Jackson is obviously worried about his legacy, and scrambling to associate himself with a candidate who so far, has had few dealings with him (though Jackson's son is a different story.)
Obviously, this fight is helpful for Obama among white voters who have never been comfortable with how Jackson practices identity politics. Also, the news helped bury the FISA story, which was creating some minor headaches for Obama. A few other things we’ve learned from this episode. One, Jesse's nervous about his own standing in the black political community, which is why he worked so hard to get ahead of this story. (After all, if Bill Clinton can become persona non grata with blacks for attacking Obama, so too can Jesse.) Two, there's a generational divide inside the black community on this debate over the government’s role in lifting up blacks vs. personal responsibility. Here's a booking challenge to folks: Go ask Bill Cosby to pick sides in this debate.
Yeah, good luck with that.
Meanwhile, it was only a matter of time before Jackson, who apparently was miffed at Barack for challenging black fathers, got tagged for his 'baby mama drama..."
...Obama's recent comments about Black fathers not abandoning their children and accepting moral responsibility in our lives is a lesson you apparently needed to learn when you were younger. If you had, it may not have caused you to cheat on your wife and father a child out of wedlock with a former staffer.
Maybe that's what really bothered you about Obama's message to the church that Black fathers should be responsible for their children; you certainly haven't been.
Living in Los Angeles I have watched your ten year old daughter Ashley Laverne Jackson grow up. Over the years I have had the pleasure to spend several holidays with your daughter including Christmas, her birthday parties and other milestones in her life. I will never turn my back on Ashley her mom and their family. It's about providing friendship, support and love to them while you have been missing in action.
Your daughter has never traveled or taken a trip with you, you have an annual birthday party in Beverly Hills every year where your entire family is welcome but your youngest child has only attended it once. She has had very little contact with her siblings and has never even met her big brother Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr, who apparently doesn't want anything to do with her. And allegedly (I believe it to be true ), he was the one to leak the scandal to the media concerning your affair. Now don't get me wrong, Obama is not above reproach. He is a politician and is fair game to be fairly criticized by you or anyone else. But to personally attack Obama is crossing the line. Obama is not talking down to Black people; he wants you and other dead beat dads to spend time and care for your children properly. The destruction of the Black family and absentee fathers is a major problem in our community.
It's a problem that King spoke out and fought against. 40 years after King's murder I can see why King didn't trust you.
Yikes! And yes, the writer of that broadside, Najee Ali, hit Jackson on the King's blood smeared on his shirt 40 years ago, too. It's not going to be fun being Jesse for the next little while... Al, meanwhile, seems really starved for stuff to do.
The Associated Press reports that Dr. James Dobson is bringing down the wrath of ... Dobson ... on Barack Obama today on his radio show, accusing Obama of "distorting scripture." Wait for it. This one's all about abortion... But first, Dobson, in a pre-taped 18-minute sermon for which Focus on the Family's PAC bought time, attacks a speech Obama gave in 2006 before a liberal Christian group, Call to Renewal:
"Even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools?" Obama said. "Would we go with James Dobson's or Al Sharpton's?" referring to the civil rights leader.
Dobson took aim at examples Obama cited in asking which Biblical passages should guide public policy — chapters like Leviticus, which Obama said suggests slavery is OK and eating shellfish is an abomination, or Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, "a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application."
"Folks haven't been reading their Bibles," Obama said. Dobson and Minnery accused Obama of wrongly equating Old Testament texts and dietary codes that no longer apply to Jesus' teachings in the New Testament. "I think he's deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology," Dobson said. "... He is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter."
Then, he gets down to business:
Dobson reserved some of his harshest criticism for Obama's argument that the religiously motivated must frame debates over issues like abortion not just in their own religion's terms but in arguments accessible to all people. He said Obama, who supports abortion rights, is trying to govern by the "lowest common denominator of morality," labeling it "a fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution."
"Am I required in a democracy to conform my efforts in the political arena to his bloody notion of what is right with regard to the lives of tiny babies?" Dobson said. "What he's trying to say here is unless everybody agrees, we have no right to fight for what we believe."
Meanwhile, over to the Denver Post, where a new Pew survey suggests that while most Americans believe in God, most do NOT believe in Dr. James Dobson ...
Most of the faithful, 70 percent, think there are paths to eternal life other than the one prescribed by their own religion. And 68 percent think there is "more than one true way" to interpret the teachings of their religion.
"That's higher than I would have intuitively thought," said Jacob Kinnard, an associate professor at the University of Denver's Iliff School of Theology. "But this has been a pluralistic country for a long time. People are much more exposed to religions other than their own."
Only Mormons (57 percent) and Jehovah's Witnesses (80 percent) have majorities who say that only their religion is the "one true faith leading to eternal life," the survey found.
About 57 percent of Evangelical Protestants and 56 percent of Muslims think many religions can lead to eternal salvation — a view also held by 89 percent of Hindus, 83 percent of mainline Protestants, 82 percent of Jews and 79 percent of Catholics. "One of the things that would be surprising to Americans is how Muslims answered," said Kinnard, referring to the fact that more than half of Muslims surveyed think many religions can lead to eternal salvation.
Sorry, Dr. Dobson.
The cable chat shows will be focusing on a New York Times story today about Muslim-Americans feeling snubbed by Obama. Congressman Keith Ellison is quoted in the story as saying that he too, got the cold shoulder from the Obama campaign. Ironically, the same cable shows that will harp on this story today have been central to whipping up Americans' anti-Muslim hysteria, "war on terror" mythology, and even questions about Obama's faith. As Chuck Todd just said on MSNBC, apparently paraphrasing Mike Barnacle, imagine how the mainstream media would erupt if Obama did visit a mosque. Just close your eyes and imagine the Fox News coverage alone...
Also in the Times, Zimbabwe continues to ride the handbasket to hell, with the opposition candidate for president taking refuge in the Dutch embassy, and the U.N. doing what it does: calling for all parties to stop the violence. Thanks, Ban Ki Moon.
WASHINGTON — An American ambassador helped cover up the illegal Chinese origins of ammunition that a Pentagon contractor bought to supply Afghan security forces, according to testimony gathered by Congressional investigators.
A military attaché has told the investigators that the United States ambassador to Albania endorsed a plan by the Albanian defense minister to hide several boxes of Chinese ammunition from a visiting reporter. The ammunition was being repackaged to disguise its origins and shipped from Albania to Afghanistan by a Miami Beach arms-dealing company.
The ambassador, John L. Withers II, met with the defense minister, Fatmir Mediu, hours before a reporter for The New York Times was to visit the American contractor’s operations in Tirana, the Albanian capital, according to the testimony. The company, under an Army contract, bought the ammunition to supply Afghan security forces although American law prohibits trading in Chinese arms.
The attaché, Maj. Larry D. Harrison II of the Army, was one of the aides attending the late-night meeting, on Nov. 19, 2007. He told House investigators that Mr. Mediu asked Ambassador Withers for help, saying he was concerned that the reporter would reveal that he had been accused of profiting from selling arms. The minister said that because he had gone out of his way to help the United States, a close ally, “the U.S. owed him something,” according to Major Harrison.
Mr. Mediu ordered the commanding general of Albania’s armed forces to remove all boxes of Chinese ammunition from a site the reporter was to visit, and “the ambassador agreed that this would alleviate the suspicion of wrongdoing,” Major Harrison said, according to his testimony.
Investigators interviewed Major Harrison by telephone on June 9, and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee made excerpts of the transcript public on Monday.
At the time of the meeting, the company, AEY Inc., was under investigation for illegal arms trafficking involving Chinese ammunition.
AEY is an interesting company. It's CEO is just 22 years old. The leg work on the case was done by the great Henry Waxman, who "invited" the young CEO to testify before the House Government Oversight Committee back in April. (Little Efraim Diveroli's Army contract was suspended a month before the hearings.) So how does a 22-year-old get a $300 million defense contract? His dad:
AEY Inc. was founded in 1999 by Michael Diveroli, Efram's father. Michael Diveroli now operates a police supply company down the street from AEY's office.
More on Little Efraim, and his interesting history (and rap sheet) from TPM Muckraker back in March. Apparently, Michael has a new company now, Worldwide Tactical, which sells police and military uniforms, and which is registered with the federal government as "minority owned..." Apparently, the father is continuing the practices of his "former" company, falsely labeling his companies as "small disadvantaged businesses" to gain more contracting opportunities.
Over to the Washington Post, where the paper's top story online is the four Americans killed in a Sadr City explosion in Iraq.
A bombing inside a local government office in Baghdad killed two American soldiers and two civilians on Tuesday, the second attack in a week that the U.S. military has blamed on rogue Shiite "special groups" linked to Iran.
The blast, inside a district council office in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City, also killed six Iraqis and wounded ten others, according to preliminary reports.
In an initial news release, U.S. officials did not provide details about the two civilians who were killed. The Reuters and Associated Press news agencies, attributing the information to an official at the U.S. embassy in Iraq, said that one of the civilians worked for the State Department and the other for the Defense Department.
They were attending a meeting of the local District Advisory Council in a section of Sadr City that was brought under U.S. and Iraqi military control after sometimes intense fighting earlier this year. The councils are part of a U.S. campaign to build the authority of local government throughout the country, an effort that has accelerated in other parts of Iraq as violence has ebbed.
The Bush administration's reaction should set at least some of your hair on fire, because they appear to be systematically laying the groundwork for an attack on Iran, which they hope to be able to label as "retaliation":
The release also made clear who the U.S. feels is responsible -- one of the Iranian-backed Shiite "special groups" that some officials consider a significant long term threat to Iraq's stability.
Except that Iran and Iraq are now friendlier than they have ever been, and friendlier than either country is with us...
The WaPo also reports on the upcoming meeting in Unity, New Hampshire between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and on Obama's moves to court women voters (whom he's already winning in most polls, but no matter! The story must go on!)
The Wall Street Journal's Susan Davis reports on Barack's tack to the center, which is irritating some left-leaning groups, like MoveOn.org. Could such a fight help Obama in the swing states? Writes Davis:
The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, conducted in early June, showed that 58% of voters perceive Sen. Obama as a liberal and 24% view him as a moderate. In contrast, 34% view Sen. McCain as a moderate and 48% see him as a conservative.
To be sure, the predominant view among party leaders is that a turn toward the center is smart politics, and that Sen. Obama's willingness to buck the left wing on issues such as the spy bill signals he is maneuvering to fight Sen. McCain directly for voters in the middle of the political spectrum.
"I applaud it," a senior Democratic lawmaker said. "By standing up to MoveOn.org and the ACLU, he's showing, I think, maybe the first example of demonstrating his ability to move to the center. He's got to make the center comfortable with him. He can't win if the center isn't comfortable."
I'm writing a lot about Bush lately... not sure why, since I'm so over the bum.
And yet, there's always more slime to uncover. This one is old slime that happens to be lapping back up on our shores:
(GUARDIAN, UK) -- The lobbyist and convicted fraudster Jack Abramoff had a direct pipeline to the Bush White House and influenced several key decisions, according to a bipartisan draft report released in Congress today.
The draft report found Abramoff associates using expensive gifts to curry favour with White House aides and orchestrating the sacking of a US state department negotiator who disagreed with them.
In addition, the congressional report uncovered six one-on-one encounters between Abramoff and George Bush — four more than the White House has acknowledged previously in its denials of any significant ties to the lobbyist.
"This evidence suggests that the White House failed to conduct even the most basic internal investigation of the White House relationship with Mr Abramoff before making public statements characterising the connection," the report states.
Abramoff's corrupt courtship of Republican congressmen played a central role in the Democrats' sweeping victory in the 2006 election.
Though his case has largely faded from public view since then, today's report sheds a new and unwelcome spotlight on the Bush administration's role in the scandal.
Three former White House officials contacted by the House of Representatives oversight committee, which produced the report, invoked their constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination in refusing to answer questions about their relationship with Abramoff.
E-mails uncovered by the oversight committee show that White House aides eliminated the job of a state department negotiator in 2001 after Abramoff associates complained about his support for labour reform in the Mariana Islands, the Pacific manufacturing hotspot.
"I'm trying to figure out what is the best way to go about [sacking the negotiator]," one White House official wrote at the time. "I don't want a firing scandal on our hands." ...
Total contacts between Bad Jack and the White House from 2001 to 2004: 485. Number of months Abe is serving in prison on tax evasion, fraud and bribery charges? 70. ("He has admitted to stealing $23m from US banks via a fake wire transfer, among other crimes," the Guardian says.)
The full committee votes on whether to make the draft report final this week.
More Bush items for the first steps of your recovery:
That, according to a new book – “Machiavelli’s Shadow” – by former Time magazine reporter Paul Alexander, is where President George W. Bush informed trusted advisor Karl Rove in 2007 that his services would no longer be needed at the White House.
“On a Sunday in midsummer, George W. Bush accompanied Karl Rove to the Episcopalian Church Rove sometimes attended,” writes Alexander. “They made their way to the front of the congregation. Then, during their time in the church, Bush gave Rove some stunning news. ‘Karl,’ Bush said, ‘there’s too much heat on you. It’s time for you to go.’”
The same article states that Republican strategists have joined everyone else in the free world (with the exception of the RedStaters and the really recalcitrant neocons) in turning on the Bushies:
"Machiavelli's Shadow" doesn't portray Rove in a favorable light and Alexander includes plenty of interviews with GOP notables unsatisfied with Rove's influence during the Bush administration.
"Every Republican I know looks at the Bush administration as a total failure," said Matt Towery, chairman of Newt Gingrich's political organization.
“To do what he did politically to us is unforgivable," Rep. Tom Tancredo told Alexander. "It will take generations to recover. I don't know how long; maybe never."
"I think the legacy is that Karl Rove will be a name that'll be used for a long, long time as an example of how not to do it," said long-time GOP strategist Ed Rollins.
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Bush's former spokesman, Scott McClellan, will testify before a House committee next week about whether Vice President Dick Cheney ordered him to make misleading public statements about the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity.
McClellan will testify publicly and under oath before the House Judiciary Committee on June 20 about the White House's role in the leak and its response, his attorneys, Michael and Jane Tigar, said on Monday.
John Conyers' House Judiciary Committee finally serves Karl Rove, only he says that his former bosses at the White House still won't let him testify. Who knew presidential prerogatives stretched that far? The bottom line:
Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the committee chairman, said the subpoena was necessary because Mr. Rove had explicitly declined an invitation to appear voluntarily. Mr. Conyers and fellow committee Democrats say they want to question Mr. Rove about the dismissals of several federal prosecutors and ask whether he knows anything about the decision to prosecute former Gov. Donald E. Siegelman of Alabama, a Democrat.
Mr. Siegelman, who was convicted on a bribery charge, was released from prison in March pending an appeal after an appeals court ruled that he had raised “substantial questions” about his case.
Mr. Rove’s lawyer, Robert D. Luskin, in a letter to Mr. Conyers this week, said the chairman was “provoking a gratuitous confrontation.” Mr. Luskin asserted that Mr. Rove would not appear because he had been directed not to do so by the White House. Although Mr. Rove has left the White House and is now a political commentator, Mr. Luskin said that Mr. Rove “in these matters is not a free agent” and must comply with instructions from the White House not to testify.
Mr. Conyers has argued that Mr. Rove may not himself invoke any privilege on behalf of the White House but that President Bush could do so.
Mr. Rove’s lawyer also noted that the House committee was engaged in a similar conflict with Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, who has also declined to provide voluntary testimony about the dismissals of the federal prosecutors and has defied a subpoena. That issue has landed in federal court, and Mr. Luskin said the Rove matter should await the resolution of that case.
Mr. Conyers, in a letter to Mr. Luskin on Thursday, said that the request to Mr. Rove was wider than the one to Ms. Miers because it also sought information about the Siegelman prosecution.
Several Democrats have asserted that Mr. Siegelman’s prosecution was encouraged for political reasons by Republicans in Washington. Mr. Siegelman served nine months of a seven-year sentence before being released pending an appeal.
Mr. Rove has denied any role in the Siegelman prosecution in comments to journalists, but Mr. Conyers is seeking to put him under oath. The subpoena demands that Mr. Rove appear before the committee on July 10.
Summary: A New York Times article detailed the connection between numerous media military analysts and the Pentagon and defense industries, reporting that "the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform" media military analysts "into a kind of media Trojan horse -- an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks." A Media Matters review found that since January 1, 2002, the analysts named in the Times article -- many identified as having ties to the defense industry -- collectively appeared or were quoted as experts more than 4,500 times on ABC, ABC News Now, CBS, CBS Radio Network, NBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, and NPR.
Babwa Wawters reveals she nearly created a little Barack Obama of her own, back in the day:
NEW YORK (AP) — After three decades of keeping mum, Barbara Walters now says she had a past affair with married U.S. Senator Edward Brooke, whom she remembers as "exciting" and "brilliant."
Appearing on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" scheduled to air Tuesday, Walters shares details of her relationship with Brooke that lasted several years in the 1970s, according to a transcript of the show provided to The Associated Press.
A moderate Republican from Massachusetts who took office in 1967, Brooke was the first African-American to be popularly elected to the Senate. Both he and Walters knew that public knowledge of their affair could have ruined his career as well as hers, Walters says.
At the time, the twice-divorced Walters was a rising star in TV news and co-host of NBC's "Today" show, but would soon jump to ABC News, where she has enjoyed unrivaled success. Her affair with Brooke, which never before came to light, had ended before he lost his bid for a third term in 1978.
Brooke later divorced, and has since remarried. Calls to a listing for Brooke in Miami by The Associated Press were not immediately returned Thursday.
Walters is the guest of Oprah Winfrey to discuss her new memoir, "Audition," which covers her long career in television, as well as her off-camera life. On "Oprah," Walters recounts a phone call from a friend who urged her to stop seeing Brooke.
"He said, 'This is going to come out. This is going to ruin your career,'" then reminded her that Brooke was up for re-election a year later. "'This is going to ruin him. You've got to break this off.'"
Winfrey asks Walters if she was in love.
"I was certainly — I don't know — I was certainly infatuated."
"Infatuated."
"I was certainly involved," Walters says. "He was exciting. He was brilliant. It was exciting times in Washington." ...
Death at the trailer park. So-called "D.C. madam" found dead of apparent suicide.
Jeane Palfrey, a 50-something woman who became better known to the world as the "D.C. Madam," who pimped women to the powerful, including Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter, and Randal Tobias of the Bush State Department (plus guys from NASA, the U.S. Military, and the International Monetary Fund), was found dead in a utility shed behind her mother's Tarpon Springs, Florida trailer home. Leaving aside questions about what she was doing with her prostitution money (apparently not buying her mother a new house,) suspicions now hang over the apparent cause of death: suicide. (Ironically enough, one of her former employees killed herself in January...)
TIME reports that a man who Palfrey approached to help her write a book says she told him she would commit suicide before going back to prison.
Palfrey's trial had threatened to bring down a number of prominent Republicans on the Hill. Now that she won't be sentenced, she won't be talking, releasing that hot ticket client list of hers, or writing that book, either. Just sayin'...
Let the conspiracy theories begin. Wikipedia offers links to a tantalizing start:
She wrote in August 1991 following an attempt to bring her to trial,"If taken into custody, my physical safety and most probably my very life would be jeopardized, rape, beating, maiming, disfigurement and more than likely murder disguised in the form of just another jailhouse accident or suicide would await me," said Palfrey in a handwritten letter to the judge accusing the San Diego police vice squad of having a vendetta against her.
"No I'm not planning to commit suicide," Palfrey told The Alex Jones Show on her last appearance, "I'm planning on going into court and defending myself vigorously and exposing the government," she said.
Here we go. At least on the left end of the spectrum, Jeane Palfrey just became the right's Vince Foster.
There will be no more warm rubs on the head from the Prez for Alphonso.
Alphonso Jackson, President Bush's HUD secretary, announced his resignation today, effective April 18. (I guess he won't be around to help implement Paulson's Miracle, after all ... )
The resignation is not all that surprising, given that Mr. Jackson is under investigation by a federal grand jury, and after the scandal touched off when it was discovered that he was vetting potential HUD contractees for their affection for George W. Bush. But something else Jackson told the group of minority contractors in Dallas is less surprising if you're familiar with contracting, and the politics and favoritism that goes into it, or if you're familiar with the way government contracting is seen as a path to wealth for many businessmen, minority and otherwise:
The secretary told the group he had canceled a contract after the contractor said he had a problem with President Bush: "Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use the funds to try to campaign against the president?" Jackson said. "Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe."
The secretary also told the audience "how government works. Once you get the contract," he said, "they just keep giving you tax dollars. ... The most amazing thing I've ever seen is the amount of contracts we give out every day. One contract can make you wealthy."
Again, it's not just Black contractors who operate this way. Come to Miami and observe how Cuban-Americans work the system, or toddle up to Washington and take a gander at the Iraq contracting and trace the tentacles back to relationships within the White House (particularly the vice president's office) and you'll see that the federal government has become not only the employer of last resort for an economy that produces little, but also the banker, and the contractor to a growing proportion of small businesses. George Will on "This Week" on Sunday proposed that left and right agree that if government is going to give corporate welfare, there should also be a cap on CEO earnings to match it. That will never happen of course, but the point Will was making is true: the U.S. economy is so thoroughly planned and centralized in Washington, no wonder it doesn't grow much anymore.
Could Eliot Spitzer have been the victim of a political vendetta? Could the FBI have been tipped off about his penchant for prostitutes by a political enemy, months before he was busted through a "routine" bank and IRS probe? Maybe... From the Miami Herald:
Spitzer Miami tryst alleged By AMY DRISCOLL Almost four months before Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in a sex scandal, a lawyer for Republican political operative Roger Stone sent a letter to the FBI alleging that Spitzer ''used the services of high-priced call girls'' while in Florida.
The letter, dated Nov. 19, said Miami Beach resident Stone learned the information from ''a social contact in an adult-themed club.'' It offered one potentially identifying detail: The man in question hadn't taken off his calf-length black socks ``during the sex act.''
Stone, known for shutting down the 2000 presidential election recount effort in Miami-Dade County, is a longtime Spitzer nemesis whose political experience ranges from the Nixon White House to Al Sharpton's presidential campaign. His lawyer wrote the letter containing the call-girl allegations after FBI agents had asked to speak to Stone, though he says the FBI did not specify why he was contacted.
''Mr. Stone respectfully declines to meet with you at this time,'' the letter states, before going on to offer ''certain information'' about Spitzer.
''The governor has paid literally tens of thousands of dollars for these services. It is Mr. Stone's understanding that the governor paid not with credit cards or cash but through some pre-arranged transfer,'' the letter said.
''It is also my client's understanding from the same source that Gov. Spitzer did not remove his mid-calf length black socks during the sex act. Perhaps you can use this detail to corroborate Mr. Stone's information,'' the letter said. It was signed by attorney Paul Rolf Jensen of Costa Mesa, Calif.
The letter also notes that while Stone believes the information is true, he ''cannot swear to its accuracy'' because it is second-hand.
James Margolin, a spokesman for the FBI's New York office, would not say whether the bureau had received the letter. A spokeswoman for Spitzer also had no comment.
The letter was written several months after allegations were leveled at Stone that he had left a threatening phone message at the office of Bernard Spitzer, the ex-governor's father, regarding ''phony'' campaign loans involving his son's unsuccessful 1994 bid for attorney general. Stone denied making the call but resigned as a consultant for state Senate Republicans in Albany.
Stone's lawyer says they're releasing the letter to quell Internet "conspiracy theories" about his role in Spitzer's fall. Whatever gets you through the night...
Just call Monica Lewinsky America's biggest fellatio underachiever.
She failed to bring down her Mr. Wrong -- then-President Bill Clinton having survived the politicized impeachment by Republicans who were probably getting THEIR action from an escort service, rather than an intern ... and speaking of escort services...
Sure, Monica did handbags. But Ashley is surely headed for Playboy ... or at least for a reality show on VH1. She's famous ... like ... Paris Hilton famous... and she could remain famous for months...!
New York Governor Eliot Spitzer took his medicine like a man this morning, announcing that, having failed to live up to the high standards he set for others, he could do nothing other than hold himself to account, and resign, effective Monday, paving the way for the state's first black governor (and only the country's second,) David Paterson. WCBS in New York has the story and the video.
The New York Times examines the career highs and lows of a brilliant but clearly flawed man, plus a cautionary tale for anyone who does business with a bank. Short version: the feds are watching your accounts.
The New York Post tabloids it up, calling the soon-to-be ex-guv a "sex addict" who blew $80 Gs on paid-for sex over the years.
The millionaire, married politician has been hopping into bed with harlots for as long as a decade and traveled as far as Florida for steamy trysts, sources said.
One of them, a 22-year-old call girl who goes by the name "Sienna" on her Web site, told ABC News that Spitzer paid her for sex two years ago when he was still attorney general.
He tipped big and "didn't do anything that wasn't clean," she added.
Her voice quavering, the curvy blonde told The Post last night she'd been flooded with calls after her revelation - and, "Yeah, it's a little scary."
She said she did not know "Kristen," the hooker who brought the governor down, and referred further questions to her lawyer.
The post also reports that Spitzer wasn't just a last minute target of opportunity for the federales:
In another development, The Post has learned that the FBI staked out Spitzer at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC, earlier this year - tipped by a wiretap that he intended to meet up with a hooker there. The Washington Post reported the surveillance took place on Jan. 26.
A source also said the FBI has been investigating Spitzer for six months.
And of course, the Post reveals that "traveling tarts" put Spitzer "in infamous company":
An old federal statute that has ensnared a number of celebrities over the years - including Charlie Chaplin, boxing champ Jack Johnson and murderous cult leader Charles Manson - could possibly be used to prosecute Gov. Spitzer.
Monday's disclosure that Spitzer had a prostitute sent from New York to his Washington hotel last month led to speculation he would be prosecuted under the Mann Act.
Although the thinking is that won't happen, since the Mann Act is now mostly used to target traffickers in underaged prostitutes.
Ugh, you need a shower just talking about it!
One thing is for certain -- Spitzer wasn't the only high profile customer of the Emerald VIP Club. Expect other big name New Yorkers to be scurrying under various rocks over the near term.
During his "I did not have sexual or financial relations with that woman" press conference this morning, John McCain fielded what seemed like a side question about his campaign's apparent push to drop out of the public financing system.
McCain has been ripping Barack Obama for supposedly backing out of a pledge to accept public financing (Obama would be a fool to do so, clearly, and as my friend Tameka put it recently, he should just say "my bad," and move on. The public won't even remember) and now is apparently trying to back out himself. Hm. Well, Houston, we have a wee problem, and it plays into a narrative that's building about Mr. McCain, given the New York Times contretemps, and it's one that's familiar to McCain haters in the GOP: John McCain as tisking campaign finance hypocrite.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The government's top campaign finance regulator says John McCain can't drop out of the primary election's public financing system until he answers questions about a loan he obtained to kickstart his once faltering presidential campaign.
Federal Election Commission Chairman David Mason, in a letter to McCain this week, said the all-but-certain Republican nominee needs to assure the commission that he did not use the promise of public money to help secure a $4 million line of credit he obtained in November.
McCain's lawyer, Trevor Potter, said Wednesday evening that McCain has withdrawn from the system and that the FEC can't stop him. Potter said the campaign did not encumber the public funds in any way.
McCain, a longtime advocate of stricter limits on money in politics, was one of the few leading presidential candidates to seek FEC certification for public money during the primaries. The FEC determined that he was entitled to at least $5.8 million. But McCain did not obtain the money, and he notified the FEC earlier this month that he would bypass the system, freeing him from its spending limits.
But just as McCain was beginning to turn his attention to a likely Democratic opponent, Mason, a Republican appointee to the commission, essentially said, "Not so fast." ...
... At issue is the fine print in the loan agreement between McCain and Fidelity Bank & Trust. McCain secured the loan using his list of contributors, his promise to use that list to raise money to pay off the loan and by taking out a life insurance policy.
But the agreement also said that if McCain were to withdraw from the public financing system before the end of 2007 and then were to lose the New Hampshire primary by more than 10 percentage points, he would have had to reapply to the FEC for public matching funds and provide the bank additional collateral for the loan.
In his letter to McCain, Mason said the commission would allow a candidate to withdraw from the public finance system as long as he had not received any public funds and had not pledged the certification of such funds "as security for private financing."
Citing the loan agreement, Mason wrote: "We note that in your letter, you state that neither you nor your (presidential campaign) committee has pledged the certification of matching payment funds as security for private financing. In preparation for commission consideration of your request upon establishment of a quorum, we invite you to expand on the rationale for that conclusion."
McCain has been an outspoken critic of the FEC and he and Mason have had ideological differences over campaign finance law for years. ...
Keith Olbermann reported on the McCain loan on "Countdown" this week, and it's an issue that should be explored, because if John McCain is going to lecture the rest of the political world about earmarks, integrity and campaign finance reform, he ought at minimum to live up to his own standards.
The New York Times produces a John McCain bimbo eruption (who woulda thunk it?):
For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk By JIM RUTENBERG, MARILYN W. THOMPSON, DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and STEPHEN LABATON
WASHINGTON — Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.
A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.
When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.
Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.
It had been just a decade since an official favor for a friend with regulatory problems had nearly ended Mr. McCain’s political career by ensnaring him in the Keating Five scandal. In the years that followed, he reinvented himself as the scourge of special interests, a crusader for stricter ethics and campaign finance rules, a man of honor chastened by a brush with shame.
But the concerns about Mr. McCain’s relationship with Ms. Iseman underscored an enduring paradox of his post-Keating career. Even as he has vowed to hold himself to the highest ethical standards, his confidence in his own integrity has sometimes seemed to blind him to potentially embarrassing conflicts of interest.
Mr. McCain promised, for example, never to fly directly from Washington to Phoenix, his hometown, to avoid the impression of self-interest because he sponsored a law that opened the route nearly a decade ago. But like other lawmakers, he often flew on the corporate jets of business executives seeking his support, including the media moguls Rupert Murdoch, Michael R. Bloomberg and Lowell W. Paxson, Ms. Iseman’s client. (Last year he voted to end the practice.)
Mr. McCain helped found a nonprofit group to promote his personal battle for tighter campaign finance rules. But he later resigned as its chairman after news reports disclosed that the group was tapping the same kinds of unlimited corporate contributions he opposed, including those from companies seeking his favor. He has criticized the cozy ties between lawmakers and lobbyists, but is relying on corporate lobbyists to donate their time running his presidential race and recently hired a lobbyist to run his Senate office.
“He is essentially an honorable person,” said William P. Cheshire, a friend of Mr. McCain who as editorial page editor of The Arizona Republic defended him during the Keating Five scandal. “But he can be imprudent.”
Mr. Cheshire added, “That imprudence or recklessness may be part of why he was not more astute about the risks he was running with this shady operator,” Charles Keating, whose ties to Mr. McCain and four other lawmakers tainted their reputations in the savings and loan debacle.
I'm sorry to get distracted (it happens to me a lot these days,) but did you catch the photo that the Times ran above this story?
Sorry, but why is it that people who stand behind John McCain always look so ... miserable? ... sorry, back to the story! This bit was interesting:
One of his efforts, though, seemed self-contradictory. In 2001, he helped found the nonprofit Reform Institute to promote his cause and, in the process, his career. It collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in unlimited donations from companies that lobbied the Senate commerce committee. Mr. McCain initially said he saw no problems with the financing, but he severed his ties to the institute in 2005, complaining of “bad publicity” after news reports of the arrangement.
Like other presidential candidates, he has relied on lobbyists to run his campaigns. Since a cash crunch last summer, several of them — including his campaign manager, Rick Davis, who represented companies before Mr. McCain’s Senate panel — have been working without pay, a gift that could be worth tens of thousands of dollars.
In recent weeks, Mr. McCain has hired another lobbyist, Mark Buse, to run his Senate office. In his case, it was a round trip through the revolving door: Mr. Buse had directed Mr. McCain’s committee staff for seven years before leaving in 2001 to lobby for telecommunications companies.
Mr. McCain’s friends dismiss questions about his ties to lobbyists, arguing that he has too much integrity to let such personal connections influence him.
“Unless he gives you special treatment or takes legislative action against his own views, I don’t think his personal and social relationships matter,” said Charles Black, a friend and campaign adviser who has previously lobbied the senator for aviation, broadcasting and tobacco concerns.
And therein lies the potential hazard for John-boy. I don't think too much will be made in the mainstream media about the possible paramour, unless more develops. I mean, who wants to picture John McCain's 900-year-old behind having sex ... with ANYBODY? But if this story opens the door to more reporting on his potential hypocrisy on issues involving lobbyists, conflicts of interests and campaign finance, it could stick to him like glue.
I await the judgment of the RedBloggers and talk radio wingnuts who detest McCain, to see if they rally ... or pile on. Right now, I'd guess they'll rally. They want to keep the White House more than they want to hate John McCain, I suspect.
And now for the meaty bit of the story, the part the MSM is disgorging with abandon tonight:
Mr. McCain’s confidence in his ability to distinguish personal friendships from compromising connections was at the center of questions advisers raised about Ms. Iseman.
The lobbyist, a partner at the firm Alcalde & Fay, represented telecommunications companies for whom Mr. McCain’s commerce committee was pivotal. Her clients contributed tens of thousands of dollars to his campaigns.
Mr. Black said Mr. McCain and Ms. Iseman were friends and nothing more. But in 1999 she began showing up so frequently in his offices and at campaign events that staff members took notice. One recalled asking, “Why is she always around?”
That February, Mr. McCain and Ms. Iseman attended a small fund-raising dinner with several clients at the Miami-area home of a cruise-line executive and then flew back to Washington along with a campaign aide on the corporate jet of one of her clients, Paxson Communications. By then, according to two former McCain associates, some of the senator’s advisers had grown so concerned that the relationship had become romantic that they took steps to intervene.
A former campaign adviser described being instructed to keep Ms. Iseman away from the senator at public events, while a Senate aide recalled plans to limit Ms. Iseman’s access to his offices.
In interviews, the two former associates said they joined in a series of confrontations with Mr. McCain, warning him that he was risking his campaign and career. Both said Mr. McCain acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman. The two associates, who said they had become disillusioned with the senator, spoke independently of each other and provided details that were corroborated by others.
Separately, a top McCain aide met with Ms. Iseman at Union Station in Washington to ask her to stay away from the senator. John Weaver, a former top strategist and now an informal campaign adviser, said in an e-mail message that he arranged the meeting after “a discussion among the campaign leadership” about her.
Team McCain has issued a stern sounding statement tonight, courtesy of the Politico:
"It is a shame that the New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit and run smear campaign," said communications director Jill Hazelbaker, in a prepared statement sent about an hour after the Times posted their story online. "John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.
"Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics, and there is nothing in this story to suggest that John McCain has ever violated the principles that have guided his career."
The sexiest story probably ever to include the words "John McCain" makes its way across the pond (courtesy of Rupert Murdoch...)
Meanwhile, Ms. Iseman's lobbying firm, Alcalde & Fay has dropped her from their "Meet the Firm" page. Now that's confidence! Her picture is still online, though... and their client list is still up, and it includes a heap of South Florida cities:
City of Deerfield Beach, FL City of Delray Beach, FL City of Hampton, VA City of Hialeah, FL City of Hobbs, NM City of Homestead, FL City of Key West, FL City of Lake Mary, FL City of Lauderdale Lakes, FL City of Lauderhill, FL City of Maitland, FL City of Melbourne, FL City of Miami, FL City of North Miami Beach, FL City of Oldsmar, FL City of Oviedo, FL City of Pembroke Pines, FL City of Petaluma, CA City of Plantation, FL
Hey, I live in Pembroke Pines! Thanks, Alcalde & Fay!
I guess Britney's not the only disfunctional one... nor is she the only slutty one.
Jamie Lynn's pregnant, y'all! Yes, white girls have teenaged babies out of wedlock, too... only this one will probably have a gold plated crib, $1,000 booties, and the occasional meal (when mommy remembers to tell the nanny to warm the bottle.)
A shocking gang rape allegation is the latest twist in the scandal over the privatization of the American military by the Bush administration. From ABC News:
A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.
Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.
"Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston," Jones says she was told.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.
"It felt like prison," says Jones, who told her story to ABC News as part of an upcoming "20/20" investigation. "I was upset; I was curled up in a ball on the bed; I just could not believe what had happened."
Finally, Jones says, she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas.
"I said, 'Dad, I've been raped. I don't know what to do. I'm in this container, and I'm not able to leave,'" she said. Her father called their congressman, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas.
"We contacted the State Department first," Poe told ABCNews.com, "and told them of the urgency of rescuing an American citizen" -- from her American employer. ...
The full story will be on 20/20 this Friday. Among the allegations are that the young woman's rape kit was handed over, not to authorities, but to security officials within KBR. Not surprisingly, it was never seen again.
Goes to show you the dangers of allowing a private corporation to operate in the name of the United States, completely outside the reach of any law -- in this case, American or Iraqi.
Over two years later, the Justice Department has brought no criminal charges in the matter. In fact, ABC News could not confirm any federal agency was investigating the case.
Legal experts say Jones' alleged assailants will likely never face a judge and jury, due to an enormous loophole that has effectively left contractors in Iraq beyond the reach of United States law.
"It's very troubling," said Dean John Hutson of the Franklin Pierce Law Center. "The way the law presently stands, I would say that they don't have, at least in the criminal system, the opportunity for justice."
That these kinds of things are going on inside America's mercenary army is shocking enough. The fact that no one in our government will likely do much about it is worse. In many ways, large and small, our government (all three branches) almost exists for the protection of private corporations, and for the advancement of their interests.
Nowadays, the commerce they're protecting includes our military, citizens like Ms. Jones be damned.
Here's the final insult:
Since no criminal charges have been filed, the only other option, according to Hutson, is the civil system, which is the approach that Jones is trying now. But Jones' former employer doesn't want this case to see the inside of a civil courtroom.
KBR has moved for Jones' claim to be heard in private arbitration, instead of a public courtroom. It says her employment contract requires it.
In arbitration, there is no public record nor transcript of the proceedings, meaning that Jones' claims would not be heard before a judge and jury. Rather, a private arbitrator would decide Jones' case. In recent testimony before Congress, employment lawyer Cathy Ventrell-Monsees said that Halliburton won more than 80 percent of arbitration proceedings brought against it.
Just in case you had any remaining doubt that the leading right wing bloggers are little more than stenographers for the White House and the GOP, dutifully tapping out talking points garnished to look like original thoughts, RawStory cops a link that utterly clears the fog:
At the urging of top conservative bloggers, the White House set up a Friday morning conference call to promote its message on the subject of executive privilege, RAW STORY has found.
"The White House hosted a blogger conference call to discuss the issues surrounding the Bush administration's use of executive privilege in the probe of the firings of eight federal prosecutors," wrote Ed Morrissey, who produces the blog Captains Quarters. "The White House arranged the call based on a recommendation by this blog, in order to familiarize the blogosphere with the legal and political arguments on which the administration will rely to prevail in the upcoming fight regarding the contempt citations Congress seems likely to approve." ...
Morrisey did not name any other participants in the call or identify the administration official who spoke to the assembled bloggers. But he showed that the message being delivered by the White House was short and to the point.
"The power to hire and fire federal prosecutors belongs exclusively to the executive branch," Morrissey wrote. "Congress has no particular oversight in these matters, and so the executive privilege claim is very compelling in this instance."
At least one commenter was critical of Morrissey's efforts.
"Thanks for reporting the administration's talking points, Captain Steno," wrote the posts only commenter. "You have a reputation for being a rational thinker, so how's about a little more in-depth analysis of the legal merit of the points?"
The offending post can be found here. Some of the commenters appear to be rightfully appalled at Captain's new job as Tony Snow's virtual lieutenant, but many of the BushBots are circling the wagons around the president and his lackey attorney general. Typical of the lap-dog commenters is someone called "Skywatch":
We are at war.
That does not forgive everything. I was and still am very worried about some of the patriot act (tho some concernces have been addressed).Like a Dem commentor said above would you want Hillary having this power? I would not. I trust the Bush toadies to use the powers to protect me. To listen and collect data on folks that wish harm on the country but I think Hillary would use those same powers to collect data on political foes.
Do you, now? Well that'll do, then, donkey, that'll do...
But there are also some lucid commenters over at Ed's, including someone called "Shieldvulf":
Lying to Congress and the people, politicizing law enforcement, and ignoring Congressional subpoenas are not at issue at all! The only question to be asked is, which side is someone on? Them over there? They are bad! It doesn't matter how well documented their outrage may be. All that matters is whether or not they get in line.
There's always something interesting going on at Wayne Madsen's blogspot. In a May 23rd posting, Madsen details ABC News' decision to spike the D.C. madam story aired on the 4th of the month, by stripping it of the names of high profile johns, including some within the Bush administration. Madsen charges that ABC not only scuttled the report by Brian Ross, former TPM Muckraker Justin Rood and others, but that they also put out "false flag" stories to deflect the story, under heavy pressure from the Bushies. Madsen also connects the following dots:
The Washington Madam case also involves criminal conspiracy and malfeasance within the Justice Department, Internal Revenue Service, and Postal Inspection Service. Palfrey's case file was not opened until June 2004 after she had been in business for over a decade without any pressure from the government. After Baltimore Police Commissioner and later Maryland State Police Superintendent Ed Norris was charged in May 2004 with three criminal counts by US Attorney Thomas DiBiagio, the IRS opened a file on Palfrey the following month. It is clear that with Norris, a 20 year veteran of the New York Police Department, facing up to 30 years in prison, he entered into a plea bargain with DiBiagio. In return for his cooperation, which included Norris naming Pamela Martin as one of the recipients of Baltimore Police supplemental accounts money, he got six months in prison and six months home detention. Norris now hosts a radio show in Baltimore.
DiBiagio's assistant US Attorney Jonathan Luna, who once worked at the Brooklyn District Attorneys' office when a probe was being conducted of both Norris and his friend, former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, was on to Norris' corruption in Baltimore. Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley appointed Norris as police commissioner but soon became disenchanted with his performance. After his re-election as Governor in 2002, Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich appointed Norris as Maryland State Police Superintendent. Luna was brutally murdered near the Pennsylvania Turnpike in December 2003.
Norris' cooperation with DiBiagio resulted in Palfrey's criminal case being opened in Baltimore subsequent to Norris' plea bargain. However, Palfrey, who merely ran an escort agency, was never a target of DiBiagio we have been informed. During his probe of Norris and Palfrey, DiBiagio had uncovered much wider criminal conduct by Maryland Republican Governor Ehrlich, convicted GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and gambling interests hoping to open casinos in Maryland. In fact, the DiBiagio probe collected evidence that Ehrlich and Abramoff were Pamela Martin clients. DiBiagio's probe was gaining steam until December 2004. That is when DiBiagio became the first U.S. Attorney fired by the Justice Department in the wake of George W. Bush's re-election. However, with the corporate media in the pocket of the Bush administration, DiBiagio's name is not counted among the fired U.S. Attorneys, yet, his firing was the most egregious of the firings. DiBiagio was actively pursuing a Republican Governor, a GOP lobbyist linked to several Republican members of Congress, most notably convicted Ohio congressman Bob Ney; Representatives, Tom DeLay, Tom Feeney, and John Doolittle; as well as top staffers to Senators Conrad Burns, Kit Bond, and Representatives Roy Blunt and Don Young. The trail also leads to Shirlington Limousine, CIA Director Porter Goss -- Dick Cheney's handpicked man to purge the agency -- , CIA Executive Director Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, and convicted Representative Duke Cunningham.
After DiBiagio's ouster, the Palfrey investigation was out on ice. However, that all began to change when Palfrey put her Vallejo, California house up for sale in August 2006. She planned to move to Germany. In early September, there was some interest in the house, however, the phone number left with World Star Realty turned out to be bogus. It was clear that while Palfrey was on a trip to Germany, unknown persons were interested in seeing her home, not with the intention of buying it but with other motivations. However, Palfrey did not leave a key with her real estate agent while she was out of the country. On September 27, after Palfrey wired $70,000 to Germany in order to purchase an apartment, the government reacted rapidly.
On September 29, Washington DC Postal Inspection Service agents Maria Cuvio and Joe Clark showed up at World Star Realty and claimed they were married and were being transferred from Washington to San Francisco and wanted to buy Palfrey's house quickly. It was clear they were conducting a ruse while a search warrant was being obtained from a willing Federal judge. Oddly, when the warrant was obtained and a Civil Asset Forfeiture order was obtained, IRS agent Burrus was not interested in Palfrey's phone records located in her house.
Considering the fact that a top Washington DC law firm that represents Saudi Arabia was a subject of the phone lists, it is odd that the Federal government would not have wanted to cull the records for information relating to prominent and not-so-prominent Arab clients and the 9/11 attacks. The significance of Jack Abramoff's role in DiBiagio's investigation should not be understated with regard to Arab clients of Pamela Martin. The FBI received evidence that two or three of the 9/11 hijackers, including Mohammed Atta, were spotted on Abramoff's Sun Cruz casino boat with American women in Madeira Beach, Florida shortly before the 9/11 attacks. Also, several of the hijackers were known to frequent erotic dancing bars in New Jersey and Florida while planning for the 9/11 attacks. There is also a possibility that, through Abramoff, some so-called "Al Qaeda" cells, as well as Saudi embassy diplomats in the Washington and Baltimore areas, may have engaged the services of prostitutes.
The timing of the Federal government's quick seizure of Palfrey's assets and forcing her back from Germany is suspect considering that the Maryland gubernatorial election between Ehrlich and O'Malley was a month away. At the end of September, the race was considered close. The Bush administration was obviously worried that Palfrey took her "black book" to Germany and the contents might have ended up in the pages of Der Spiegel or Stern. In fact, there was no Heidi Fleiss-type "black book," but the government did not know that. The Bush administration's asset seizure was merely a ploy to get Palfrey to return to the United States. The failure of the government's young and inexperienced agents to seize Palfrey's 46 pounds of phone records was a monumental blunder on the part of the IRS and Postal Inspectors. That is why Assistant U.S. Attorney William Cowden has been so adamant in his requests to Judge Kessler to keep the records from further release.
Palfrey and her attorney has called for the appointment of a Special Counsel in the Palfrey case. That certainly seems warranted after one of the Pamela Martin clients retained the law firm of Bracewell & Giuliani. Rudolph Giuliani was New York Mayor during the time Norris and Kerik were under a criminal probe by the Brooklyn District Attorney. Pamela Martin clients also lived in New York. We now have a murdered Assistant U.S. Attorney, a fired U.S. Attorney, several high-profile and blackmailable "johns," and the involvement of the law firm of a presidential candidate involved in defending one of the escort agency's high profile clients. This unfolding story has merely shown the tip of a huge iceberg.
That's a lot of dots, but sadly, I find it harder to believe that there's nothing there, than to believe that there is.
One thing, though, I sure wish Madsen would update his blog to make it possible to link directly to individual stories...
During the Paul Wolfowitz/World Bank scandal, relating to his gifting his then-girlfriend Shaha Reza with a plum job in contravention to the rules, the media left out one little detail: namely, that Mr. Wolfowitz was and is still married, and not to Ms. Reza. What's more, as Wayne Madsen reports:
There is more disturbing news that WMR has received about Wolfowitz after he was named Deputy Defense Secretary in early 2001. Our sources have told us that after Wolfowitz became Deputy Defense Secretary under Donald Rumsfeld, his wife, Clare Selgin, wrote a letter to President George W. Bush to inform him that her husband had been carrying on an affair with Shaha Riza while he was Dean of the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and that it was continuing while Wolfowitz was serving as the Pentagon's number two man. However, our sources claim that Bush never saw the letter. It was allegedly intercepted by Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff and close Wolfowitz friend, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
While some might consider Mrs. Selgin's letter to have been the product of a bitter wife, she was acting responsibly in informing the President that as the number two man at the Pentagon with the highest level security clearances, her husband was subject to potential blackmail. However, Libby, who saw fit to compromise the identity of a covert CIA agent and her non-official cover firm, did not worry about national security implications while he served as Cheney's National Security Adviser.
What's more:
The cavalier Wolfowitz continued his relationship with Shaha Riza after taking over the reins at the World Bank, a major factor in his ouster. However, our World Bank sources have revealed that the team of neo-con advisers and staff that Wolfowitz brought with him into the bank engaged in improper activities while on official overseas business for the World Bank. One senior adviser to Wolfowitz was caught in repeated compromising positions with young women in Latin America and Southeast Asia and it is said that his trips to both regions were merely "sex tours" designed as official business. Wolfowitz personally signed off on these types of trips for his coterie of cronies and advisers.
And just to put the coda on the ick factor of all of this, allow me once again to post a picture of the Wolf in question:
I haven't had a chance to watch the Monica Goodling testimony yet, but I have figured out the bombshell. And it is this:
A former Justice Department official told House investigators Wednesday that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales tried to review his version of the prosecutor firings with her at a time when lawmakers were homing in on conflicting accounts.
"It made me a little uncomfortable," Monica Goodling, Gonzales' former White House liaison, said of her conversation with the attorney general just before she took a leave of absence in March. "I just did not know if it was appropriate for us to both be discussing our recollections of what had happened."
In a daylong appearance before the Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee, Goodling, 33, also acknowledged crossing a legal line herself by considering the party affiliations of candidates for career prosecutor jobs - a violation of law.
No, not that... let's try again:
A former Justice Department official told House investigators Wednesday that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales tried to review his version of the prosecutor firings with her at a time when lawmakers were homing in on conflicting accounts.
"It made me a little uncomfortable," Monica Goodling, Gonzales' former White House liaison, said of her conversation with the attorney general just before she took a leave of absence in March. "I just did not know if it was appropriate for us to both be discussing our recollections of what had happened."
In a daylong appearance before the Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee, Goodling, 33, also acknowledged crossing a legal line herself by considering the party affiliations of candidates for career prosecutor jobs - a violation of law.
Um, nope. Try it one more time:
Goodling's dramatic story about her final conversation with Gonzales brought questions from panel members about whether he had tried to align her story with his and whether he was truthful in his own congressional testimony.
Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee last month that he didn't know the answers to some questions about the firings because he was steering clear of aides - such as Goodling - who were likely to be questioned.
"I haven't talked to witnesses because of the fact that I haven't wanted to interfere with this investigation and department investigations," Gonzales told the panel.
Goodling said for the first time Wednesday that Gonzales did review the story of the firings with her at an impromptu meeting she requested in his office a few days before she took a leave of absence.
"I was somewhat paralyzed. I was distraught, and I felt like I wanted to make a transfer," Goodling recalled during a packed hearing of the House Judiciary Committee.
Gonzales, she said, indicated he would think about Goodling's request.
"He then proceeded to say, 'Let me tell you what I can remember,' and he laid out for me his general recollection ... of some of the process" of the firings, Goodling added. When Gonzales finished, "he asked me if I had any reaction to his iteration."
Goodling said the conversation made her uncomfortable because she was aware that she, Gonzales and others would be called by Congress to testify.
"Was the attorney general trying to shake your recollection?" asked Rep. Artur Davis, D-Ala.
Goodling paused.
"I just did not know if it was a conversation we should be having and so I just didn't say anything," she replied. She added that she thought Gonzales was trying to be kind.
Bingo.
Read Ms. Goodling's opening statement to the House Judiciary Committee here.
Perhaps worried that yet another scandal dam has burst, the DOJ issued the following statement today:
A Justice Department spokesman says Gonzales was only trying to help Goodling and comfort her "in a very difficult period of her life."
Riiight...
And more on the Goodling vs. McNulty liars showdown here.
Alberto Gonzales proves that he's not only the most incompetent attorney general in memorable U.S. history, he's also one of the sleaziest:
WASHINGTON -- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday he relied heavily on his deputy to oversee the firings of U.S. attorneys, appearing to distance himself from his departing second-in-command.
Gonzales' comments came the day after Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty said he would step down by the end of summer, a decision that people familiar with his plans said was hastened by the controversy over last year's firings of eight prosecutors.
"At the end of the day, the recommendations reflected the views of the deputy attorney general. He signed off on the names," Gonzales told reporters after a speech about Justice Department steps to curb rising violent crime.
"The one person I would care about would be the views of the deputy attorney general, because the deputy attorney general is the direct supervisor of the United States attorneys," Gonzales said.
McNulty, reached in San Antonio after Gonzales' remarks, declined to respond.
The uncomfortable moment capped weeks of strain between the two men and their staffs, a rift that grew as a result of the firings that Congress suspects were politically motivated. It also raises questions of whether McNulty's resignation also was ordered, despite his insistence that it was his own decision to step down. ...
Just days ago, Gonzales couldn't tell the House Judiciary Committee who on earth could have been responsible for the firings, but he was pretty sure it was Kyle Sampson's fault. Now, conveniently, the culprit is the latest departing deputy. And as for McNulty being to blame, he has already testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and said in one on one meetings with Senator Chuck Schumer, that he was given bogus reasons for the purge, which conveniently allowed him to go before congress and market the "performance related reasons" shillery, which he promptly took back in subsequent conversations with Chuch Schumer:
McNulty has acknowledged approving, last October, the list of prosecutors who were ordered to leave. But documents released by the Justice Department show he was not closely involved in picking all the U.S. attorneys who were put on the list -- a job mostly driven by two Gonzales staffers with little prosecutorial experience.Gonzales ultimately signed off on the list. He said he was reassured by McNulty as recently as March that the firings were justified.
Really? Well it seems McNulty tells a different story:
Despite his own misleading statements before Congress, McNulty is the wrong man to go in this scandal. On Feb. 6, 2007, McNulty told a Senate panel that most of the ousted prosecutors were fired for "performance-related" issues. But as the performance records of the fired attorneys became public, it was revealed that nearly all of them held positive job evaluations from the Department of Justice. One fired U.S. attorney -- Nevada's Daniel Bogden -- said that in a phone conversation with McNulty prior to his firing he was told performance "did not enter into the equation" as a reason for his dismissal. McNulty also told Congress that "the decision to fire the eight U.S. attorneys in December was made solely by the Justice Department. He was furious, aides said, after learning later that [Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle] Sampson had been talking to the White House about potential firings since at least January 2005." McNulty acknowledged providing inaccurate information to Congress about the dismissals, "but blamed the errors on inadequate preparation by others more deeply involved in the removals."
McNulty's testimony raises more questions about the account given to Congress by the attorney general. In his February testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, McNulty acknowledged during contentious testimony that fired U.S. attorney Bud Cummins had been let go simply because the administration wanted to name former Republican National Committee operative Timothy Griffin in his place. In that hearing, Schumer asked, "So, in other words, Bud Cummins was fired for no reason. There was no cause?" McNulty answered, "No cause provided in his case, as I am aware of it." That revelation sparked additional inquiries as Congress sought to determine whether the other firings were aimed at interfering with ongoing cases. One day after his testimony, a Justice Department spokesman sent an email to other aides saying Gonzales was "extremely upset" that McNulty acknowledged the true cause for the firing. While McNulty's testimony "infuriated" Gonzales, "eventually, McNulty's position proved to be correct."
Also, McNulty he says that before his initial congressional testimony, he was coached on what to say by none other than Karl Rove.
The orders from the White House to any number of embattled senior administration officials appear to be the same: Hunker down, admit nothing, offer no appearance of panic and whatever you do, don't resign.
The penalty for violating those orders came more clearly into focus this morning. Just hours after Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty announced his resignation, his boss publicly stabbed him in the back.
McNulty, widely considered to have played only a supporting role in the controversial firings of U.S. attorneys last year, did his bosses the kindness yesterday of citing "financial pressures" as his reason for abruptly ending his long career in public service in the midst of a scandal.
But Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wasted no time in planting the knife. Although Gonzales has previously been vague to the point of cluelessness about the genesis of the firings, suddenly this morning the ambiguity was gone.
It would seem to be an obvious answer, given the nickname given the group of eight U.S. attorneys fired with the approval of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (that would be the GONZALES EIGHT...)
But as Gonzo's most recent testimony before the House Judiciary Committee demonstrates, he either had no idea why he was approving the firings, or he knew and now won't say. Mr. Gonzales claims that while he "takes full responsibility" for dumping the eight attorneys as part of what's being called the Pearl Harbor day massacre, he has no idea who recommended the eight to be let go. Like a children's game, Florida Rep. Robert Wexler walked Gonzo through a list of people who Gonzales says didn't do it:
It wasn't George W. Bush... It wasn't Dick Cheney... It wasn't Alberto Gonzales... It wasn't Kyle Sampson... It wasn't former Deputy Attorney General James Comey... It wasn't Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty... It might have been Kyle Sampson ... but of course Fredo doesn't know for sure because he hasn't talked to him about it, even though he signed off on the firing and Sampson was supposedly in charge of the ... never mind... let's just hear from the idiot:
Gonzales: Out of respect for the integrity of this investigation and the investigations occurring at the Department of Justice, I have not made that inquiry with respect to other fact witnesses.
Wexler: But you were OK with firing them, but you won't tell us who made the recommendation to fire them.
Gonzales: I think I was justified in relying upon the senior leadership in the department ... Let me just say this: I did not make the decision with respect to Mr. Iglesias ...
Wexler: I know. You haven't made any decision ... You have been very clear about that.
Gonzales: I accept full responsibility for this.
Wexler: But you won't tell us who put Mr. Iglesias on that list?
Gonzales: You would have a better opportunity to access ...
Wexler: I would?
Gonzales: The committee would, the Congress.
Wexler: Are you the attorney general? Do you run the Department of Justice?
Oh, and who recommended the firing of the Gonzales Eight? Clearly it was Karl Rove, and it was done because of Rove's and various GOP Congressmen's complaints that the attorneys wouldn't play ball in Rove's phony voter fraud scheme to influence the 2006 midterm elections. But the administration would rather leave Albertcito twisting in the wind until the very end in order to save Turd Blossom.
McClatchy Newspapers uncovers the latest undercurrent of the Gonzogate scandal: the politicization of the Justice Department's Civil Rights division, which was created as part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and which traditionally prosecution voting rights violations, hate crimes, police brutality and the like. The goal: to use voter fraud investigations to depress Democratic voter turnout. Consequently, there was less time left in the day to do what the division was designed to do, and many veteran prosecutors left the DOJ altogether. All the better to replace them with mindless GOP hacks who'd serve the Rovian cause of perpetual Republican government. It's so Soviet it should be have a "kov" at the end.
Update: CNN reports on the erosion of the civil rights division. And the Senate Judiciary Committee probes Gonzo's bag man. And one more gem from TPM: Monica Goodling just might be the goodly statue cover up queen from the bad old days of John Ashcroft.
The closer the Gonzalesgate scandal moves to White House advisor Karl Rove, the more tenuous Albercito's job prospects have got to be. I missed the mark on Alberto Gonzales losing his job by last month's end, but I still believe the White House will cut him loose at a convenient time, all the better to protect Rove from a nasty subpoena.
WASHINGTON -- A senior Justice Department official who testified about performance shortcomings of several fired U.S. attorneys has told congressional investigators he was coached the day before at a White House meeting attended by political adviser Karl Rove.
The witness, Associate Deputy Attorney General William Moschella, said he was urged during the dinner hour meeting on March 5 to publicly specify reasons for the dismissals, according to a transcript of the investigators' April 24 interview with him. Until the March 6 hearing before a House Judiciary subcommittee, Justice Department officials had said publicly only that some of the firings were based on performance, offering no specifics. At the hearing, Moschella laid out detailed criticism of each of five fired prosecutors' specific performance.
Moschella's boss, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, told investigators in an April 27 interview that he also was at the March 5 White House meeting and that Rove was there. McNulty recalled Moschella being told to be sure to lay out the justifications for the firings, according to the transcript of his interview by investigators.
Deputy White House spokeslady Dana Perino was at the meeting, too, but of course, being a press secretary and all, she has no idea who else was there or what was said...
Meanwhile, there's news on the former number two at Justice, James Comey, the man made famous, at least in my book, for showing common sense hesitation on the Bushian NSA warantless wiretapping program while he stood in for an ailing John Ashcroft (who was famously accosted in his sick bed by none other than Al Gonzales, then the White House counsel, along with Andy Card. The two wanted the seriously ill Ashcroft to overrule Comey's objections and let the warrentless eavesdropping on Americans go forward. Apparently Comey was not let in on the plans to fire the U.S. attorneys who had refused to play ball with Bush and Gonzo's election rigging voter fraud scheme. Perhaps after all the NSA nastiness "back in the day," Albertcito just didn't trust Comey to play ball...
Fifth Amendment Monica gets immunity for her testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on the Gonzalesgate affair. And it just gets worse for the Bushies:
By 21-10, the House oversight committee voted to issue a subpoena to Rice to compel her story on the Bush administration's claim, now discredited, that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa.
Moments earlier in the committee chamber next door, the House Judiciary Committee voted 32-6 to grant immunity to Monica Goodling, Gonzales' White House liaison, for her testimony on why the administration fired eight federal prosecutors. The panel also unanimously approved — but did not issue — a subpoena to compel her to appear.
Simultaneously across Capitol Hill, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved — but did not issue — a subpoena on the prosecutors' matter to Sara Taylor, deputy to presidential adviser Karl Rove.
And in case Gonzales thought the worst had passed with his punishing testimony last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the chairman and top Republican issued a new demand: Refresh the memory that Gonzales claimed had failed him 71 times during the seven-hour session.
"Provide the answers to the questions you could not recall last Thursday," Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and ranking Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, wrote to Gonzales on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Fredo, as Dubya calls Albertcito, is learning to handle the sting of rejection:
...Gonzales tried Wednesday to mend fences on Capitol Hill. He met with a key critic, Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., who has complained that Gonzales was not truthful with him over the dismissal of Bud Cummins, the former U.S. attorney in Little Rock, Ark.
But his outreach apparently didn't take.
"I reiterated with the attorney general, face-to-face, that I think he should resign," Pryor told reporters in a conference call after meeting with Gonzales in Washington. "I think it's the best thing for the Department of Justice and it's probably the best thing for him personally and the administration."
Owie.
Meanwhile, there's more on the dirt that the Justice Department was up to when it was supposed to be looking out for the interests of the American people...
The Bush administration is digging in. With the president's approval ratings and credibility in the toilet, and his legacy hanging by a thread because of the incompetence of Iraq, compounded by the incompetence of Katrina, the incompetence of running the economy, immigration policy, etc., etc., etc., the administration has chosen to barricade itself in, and swing wildly at all comers like a bear with one leg caught in a steel trap, whether it's on Alberto Gonzales, on Iraq war funding, on timetables, or on Congressional oversight in any form (they don't want it, duh...)
So which fights can the White House win, if the Democrats dig in, too, and as the mechanisms of oversight inevitably kick in? I see the walls slowly closing in on this administration, but I am becoming increasingly convinced that they plan to hunker down, Nixon style, and cling to one another as the ship goes down. First, the walls falling. Let me count the ways:
1. Iraq propaganda. The lies of Iraq are now glaringly obvious, and perhaps the most egregious is the lies about heroism, by Jessica Lynch, by Pat Tillman -- both legitimate heroes due to their service, but each of whom were used cynically by a Pentagon desperate to sell the war to an increasingly skeptical public. Tillman's brother testified before Congress today, along with the a fellow Ranger who was with the former NFL star when he was cut down by friendly fire, and who was ordered not to tell Tillman's brother, Kevin (who was in a nearby convoy in the same Army convoy) what he knew, and of course, Ms. Lynch, who to her credit, refused to play along with the administration's glorification of her back in the early days of the war, in 2003. Their words about the administration were damning.
2. Investigation of Karl Rove. Finally, Rove becomes the direct target of an investigation, this time by the Office of Special Counsel, which, incidentally, has the power to subpoena White House officials, with the exception of the President and Vice President, according to former New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, who filed the complaint which got the ball rolling. Rove is being probed for possibly violating the Hatch Act, by firing Iglesias while the latter was performing his service in the Reserves. Rove is also being looked at for the alleged distribution of RNC email accounts to White House staffers to do political work they shouldn't have been doing on taxpayer time.
3. Albertogate. The Bushies are circling the wagons around the attorney general, but increasingly, the wagons are few and far between. Sources inside and outside the White House -- Republican sources -- are apparently privately pushing for him to go. One reason Bush may be hanging on tight: if Alberto resigns, the White House may fear that the Dems will next set their sights on Mr. "Don't Touch Me, Sheryl Crow!"
4. War funding. President Bush threw down the gauntlet on war funding and timetables today, in his own, Bushly sombar way, announcing unsurprisingly that he will veto the bill passed by the Congress to fund the war. The Bushies have clearly made the decision to try and throw Iraq over to the Dems, by making them the scapegoats for cutting off the funds. It seems to me that the Democrats have no choice but to come back fighting, too. If they fold, they give the Bushies ammunition to keep being recalcitrant, and to continue defying the will of the American people. Seemingly odd strategic choice: deployiing Five Deferrments Dick to take shots at Congress over matters of war. But for the White House to put forward the supremely unpopular veep, clearly indicates that they are no longer playing for the support of the American people (they probably understand that such support is lost to the ages) -- they are desperately kow-towing to the most extreme elements of their base, who love Cheney, and who want to see George W. Bush fight like a man.
The bill approved $123.2 billion, with the vast majority — $96 billion — going to the Defense Department, mostly to continue military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also included a $1 billion increase for the National Guard and Reserve and $1.1 billion for improvements to military housing. The bill also has $5.75 billion for programs overseen by the State Department, with $3.2 billion of that for Iraq.
Update: Further proof that the White House has abandoned the vast majority of the American public, and is now playing strictly to the crazies: the rhetoric of the forward men for the Iraq project is getting more and more desperate. Beyond the despicable and cowardly Cheney, there's also the criminal Tom Delay, who went straight for the "treason" card, and the idiotic Bush sycophant Glenn Beck, who bet the farm this week, saying per the ThinkP headline: "Iraq Withdrawal Would Be ‘America’s Most Shameful Act Of Immorality Since Slavery’... right...
President Bush gives Alberto Gonzales a hearty vote of confidence ... without ... having ... actually ... watched ... his ... testimony... And you thought Dubya was a moron...!
Apparently, being Paul Wolfowitz means hooking up your girlfriend with a plum job. Now, Germany becomes the first to say, he's got to leave the World Bank. There will be others.
Meanwhile, Frank Rich lights up the Bush administration for the twin scandals of Wolfie and Gonzo. From Wolfowitz to Gonzales, Rich weaves a tale of rank incompetence and probable malfeasance in an administration known almost exclusively for both ... Here's the opener:
President Bush has skipped the funerals of the troops he sent to Iraq. He took his sweet time to get to Katrina-devastated New Orleans. But last week he raced to Virginia Tech with an alacrity not seen since he hustled from Crawford to Washington to sign a bill interfering in Terri Schiavo's end-of-life medical care. Mr. Bush assumes the role of mourner in chief on a selective basis, and, as usual with the decider, the decisive factor is politics. Let Walter Reed erupt in scandal, and he'll take six weeks to show his face - and on a Friday at that, to hide the story in the Saturday papers. The heinous slaughter in Blacksburg, Va., by contrast, was a rare opportunity for him to ostentatiously feel the pain of families whose suffering cannot be blamed on the administration.
Brilliant start. A bit more:
At home, the president is also hobbled by the Iraq cancer's metastasis - the twin implosions of Alberto Gonzales and Paul Wolfowitz. Technically, both men have been pilloried for sins unrelated to the war. The attorney general has repeatedly been caught changing his story about the extent of his involvement in purging eight federal prosecutors. The Financial Times caught the former deputy secretary of defense turned World Bank president privately dictating the extravagant terms of a State Department sinecure for a crony (a k a romantic partner) that showers her with more take-home pay than Condoleezza Rice.
Yet each man's latest infractions, however serious, are mere misdemeanors next to their roles in the Iraq war. What's being lost in the Beltway uproar is the extent to which the lying, cronyism and arrogance showcased by the current scandals are of a piece with the lying, cronyism and arrogance that led to all the military funerals that Mr. Bush dares not attend. Having slept through the fraudulent selling of the war, Washington is still having trouble confronting the big picture of the Bush White House. Its dense web of deceit is the deliberate product of its amoral culture, not a haphazard potpourri of individual blunders.
Another story I didn't get a chance to put up yesterday: The surprise unsurprising resignation Friday of former Alberto Gonzales aide Monica Goodling, the Messiah Bible college and Pat Robertson-founded law school alum and apparent firing queen of Gonzogate, who had asserted that she would refuse to testify before the House and Senate judiciary committees and would instead assert her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination (something about which many lawyers are quite dubious...) making her the first Justice Department official in the history of the body to do so and remain employed.
Goodling, who was the Justice Department's White House liaison, becomes the third administration official to resign over the firings of the Gonzales 8, Karl Rove look-alike Kyle Sampson and former director of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys Michael Battle having gone before. Goodling's abrupt resignation, no reason given, won't get her off the hook. John Conyers has indicated he still intends to call her before the House Judiciary Committee, as early as next week. Ditto for Pat Leahy on the Senate side. As some legal analysts have said on cable-chat, the committees should call Ms. Goodling before them, and make her take the Fifth on television. Or as others have suggested, subpoena her, and throw her in jail for contempt of Congress if she refuses to appear. Running away from your job won't get you off the hot seat, dear.
Meanwhile, the Muckrakers take a peek into what an actual "loyal Bushie" in the U.S. Attorneys office looks like...
Apparently, he was the only GOPer willing to play the president's bag man on Gonzalesgate. He's on Meet the Press right now embarrassing himself, trying to carry the administration's water, and being picked clean by Pat Leahy. (Hatch even did his best fulmination, going after Carol Lam as failing to do her job in southern California, and then when it got really hot, Hatch played the race card, pointing out that Gonzales is "the first Hispanic attorney general of the United States." And when confronted with his own intervention to stymie the firing of a U.S. attorney in his home state, (a man named Warren) he seemed frankly flabbergasted. It was a near Pat Roberts performance for Hatch, who comes off as an unexpurgated hack and White House shill.
Unfortunately, Tim Russert continues to lose my respect, by his glaring failure to point out to the audience that Kyle Sampson, the doughy Karl Rove lookalike whose testimony last week made it plain that Alberto Gonzales lied in his March 13 press conference when he said he played no role in the firings, used to work for Hatch.
It's a shame that a sitting United States Senator would sell himself so cheap (hell, these guys don't even get paid to do the Sunday chat shows.) It's an even greater shame that someone in Russert's position would play such a Senator's enabler.
Then came a wierd moment when Russert asked Hatch if the president came to him and asked him to replace Gonzales as attorney general, would he do it. Hatch aw shucks'd it pretty well, but clearly, he would make a perfect replacement, in that he would be as much the president's water boy as Gonzales ever was. In other words, there wouldn't be a dime's worth of difference between Alberto and Orrin.
Back to reality, Pat Leahy had the line of the morning, when he responded to one of Hatch's shill sessions by stating that it seems Orrin remembers what day today is. (April fools!) But on the subject of Hatch as the next A.G., Leahy did that line one better, and gave an interesting window into Orrin's possible motivation for playing hand puppet to the White House this morning:
RUSSERT: Would Senator Hatch be an acceptible replacement for Mr. Gonzales?
LEAHY: The rumor on the Hill this week is that he was actively running for it ... but I'm gonna have to leave that to him...
Fascinating...
Meanwhile, on the other end of the dial, Mitch McConnell proves he can't even make the okey dokey dance look good on Fox...
Alberto Gonzales just might be getting advice from counsel, as they say, since as of today, his operative phrase has gone from "I wasn't involved" in the purge of eight U.S. attorneys (and an apparent scheme to get rid of Patrick Fitzgerald too) to "I don't recall..."
At the same time, it's becoming clear that Gonzales cares more about himself, at the end of the day, and about preserving his position, than he does about either the credibility, mission and personnel of the Justice Department, or about the image and reputation of the White House and the President, all of which his continued presence is seriously harming. It's long past time for Gonzales to put an end to this drama by resigning, or being fired. I still maintain that he will be gone in a matter of weeks. Time will tell if I'm right. For now, Gonzales will have a couple of weeks to ponder his testimony before Congress, as the legislative branch takes a spring break recess until April 10th. He is scheduled to go before the Senate and/or House on April 17th, although apparently he's seeking a way to move things up, perhaps to spare himself and his political party the long drawn out waiting game ... but then again, it's probably mainly to spare himself.
I was waaaay too busy yesterday, so I'm playing catch-up on the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings involving Kyle Sampson, the former chief of staff to Alberto Gonzales, who gave voluntary testimony yesterday. To sum up, Sampson went to the Senate to support the concept of firing federal prosecutors for political reasons, but not to get Albertcito (or Harriet Miers or anyone else for that matter,) off the hook. Short answer: this guy has no intention of being Scooter Libby.
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales was more deeply involved in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys than he has sometimes acknowledged, and Gonzales and his aides have made a series of inaccurate claims about the issue in recent weeks, the attorney general's former chief of staff testified yesterday.
In dramatic testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, D. Kyle Sampson also revealed that New Mexico U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias was not added to the dismissal list until just before the Nov. 7 elections, after presidential adviser Karl Rove complained that Iglesias had not been aggressive enough in pursuing cases of voter fraud. Previously, Rove had not been tied so directly to the removal of the prosecutors.
These and other disclosures by Sampson, who abruptly resigned earlier this month, represent the latest challenge to Gonzales's version of events. The attorney general has been sharply criticized by lawmakers of both parties, by his own employees and even by President Bush for his handling of the U.S. attorneys' dismissals.
Sampson's testimony also shows that, along with Rove, other senior White House aides were more closely involved in the dismissals than has previously been disclosed. It adds to evidence that some of the firings were influenced by GOP political concerns and that the selection process was not based on hard data.
Sampson said he even suggested firing U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald of Chicago while Fitzgerald was prosecuting Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff for perjury. Sampson said he immediately dropped the idea, which he raised at a White House meeting last year, when he received negative reactions from then-White House Counsel Harriet E. Miers and her deputy, William Kelley.
Gonzales has sought to portray himself as detached from the details of the firings, saying on March 13 that Sampson was in charge. Gonzales also said he "was not involved in any discussions about what was going on" in the process. The attorney general sought to clarify that statement in a television interview Monday, acknowledging more frequent contact with Sampson.
But Sampson provided new detail of Gonzales's involvement, testifying in response to questioning that he had at least five discussions with his boss about the project after Gonzales first approved the idea in early 2005 and that the attorney general was aware which prosecutors were under consideration for dismissal.
"I don't think the attorney general's statement that he was not involved in any discussions of U.S. attorney removals was accurate," Sampson said. "I remember discussing with him this process of asking certain U.S. attorneys to resign."
Sampson added later that "the decision makers in this case were the attorney general and the counsel to the president" -- Miers. ...
The former Gonzo aide goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, amid new revelations about his role in the U.S. attorney firings. More to come...
Congressional inquiries into conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center are taking a political turn as Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), a member of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, investigates whether high-profile Republicans used their influence to help a firm win a private maintenance contract.
Former Vice President Dan Quayle, former Treasury Secretary John Snow and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld all have some connection to the firm, IAP Worldwide Services. The company's board is also populated with former top military officials.
IAP won the maintenance contract after a protracted competition with a group of former federal civil service employees who also bid for the work that was targeted for privatization during the Clinton administration.
In an interview, Kaptur said IAP's corporate connections "look like a Republican parking lot. Was the outsourcing a matter of favoritism with people with the right connections?"
The Politico breaks down the why of the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.
Some of the political fireworks between President Bush and Congress over fired U.S. attorneys could well be explained by looking back at when the saga began: the 2004 election.
Back then, Democrats were trying to register enough new voters to beat Bush while Republicans were issuing dire warnings that the Democrats were out to steal the election by encouraging voter fraud.
It's an issue the White House had fixated on since the Supreme Court ended the 2000 Florida recount and settled the presidential campaign amid charges that if the ballots of the Sunshine State's black voters had been counted, Democrat Al Gore would have won.
Bush's allies were obsessed with ensuring that his reelection couldn't be questioned as well. So, in the fall of 2004, Republican operatives tucked thick folders of newspaper clippings and other fraud tips under their arms and pitched to reporters their claims that the Democrats' registration program would lead to rampant voter fraud. Their passion was clear, but their evidence was slim, consisting mostly of isolated incidents of voter registration irregularities that were handled by local police or election officials.
What wasn't mentioned in those conversations with reporters was a Republican National Committee strategy, already underway, to work with state parties to identify and challenge questionable voters at the polling precincts. Among those working at the RNC was Tim Griffin, the former Karl Rove aide who recently replaced fired U.S. attorney Bud Cummins. Then, with the vast federal law enforcement community acting as the new sheriff, Republicans hoped to pocket the evidence they longed for: a string of high-profile investigations and convictions.
Failure of some U.S. attorneys to pursue the final plank in that strategy now appears to have helped trigger an internal debate over whether to fire all or some of them, administration comments and e-mails suggest. ...
The firestorm over the fired U.S. attorneys was sparked last month when a top Justice Department official ignored guidance from the White House and rejected advice from senior administration lawyers over his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The official, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, ignored White House Counsel Harriet Miers and senior lawyers in the Justice Department when he told the committee last month of specific reasons why the administration fired seven U.S. attorneys — and appeared to acknowledge for the first time that politics was behind one dismissal. McNulty's testimony directly conflicted with the approach Miers advised, according to an unreleased internal White House e-mail described to ABC News. According to that e-mail, sources said, Miers said the administration should take the firm position that it would not comment on personnel issues.
Until McNulty's testimony, administration officials had consistently refused to publicly say why specific attorneys were dismissed and insisted that the White House had complete authority to replace them. That was Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' approach when he testified before the committee in January.
But McNulty, who worked on Capitol Hill 12 years, believed he had little choice but to more fully discuss the circumstances of the attorneys' firings, according to a a senior Justice Department official familiar the circumstances. McNulty believed the senators would demand additional information, and he was confident he could draw on a long relationship with New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, in explaining in more detail, sources told ABC News.
In doing so, however, McNulty went well beyond the scope of what the White House cleared him to say when it approved his written testimony the week before the hearing, according to administration sources closely involved in the matter.
Three things you DON'T want said by people on your side when you're in the midst of a White House scandal ending in "gate":
#1: "I plead the Fifth" #2: "I plead the Fifth" #3: "I plead the ..." you get the idea.
So the chief counsel to the nation's chief law enforcement official says she will take the Fifth rather than testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Gonzogate scandal. Her words are pretty chilling, if you're a Bushie:
"I have decided to follow my lawyer's advice and respectfully invoke my constitutional right," Monica Goodling, Gonzales' counsel and White House liaison, said in a statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
And the words from her attorney (who Keith Olbermann deftly points out tonight was also the guy who prosecuted Pete Rose for betting on baseball) are even worse:
"The potential for legal jeopardy for Ms. Goodling from even her most truthful and accurate testimony under these circumstances is very real," [attorny John Dowd] said. Goodling was key to the Justice Department's political response to the growing controversy. She took a leave of absence last week.
"One need look no further than the recent circumstances and proceedings involving Lewis Libby," Dowd said, a reference to the recent conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff in the CIA leak case.
To which Pat Leahy rightly replied:
"The American people are left to wonder what conduct is at the base of Ms. Goodling's concern that she may incriminate herself in connection with criminal charges if she appears before the committee under oath,"
So what now for Gonzlaes, who according to reports is only hanging onto his job ont he condition that he make things right with Congress? Well, if his NBC News interview today is any idication of his prowess as a witness (he's set to go before Congress on April 17) in the immortal words of Mother Klump in "The Nutty Professor" movie, "he doesn't look well..." Of course, Gonzo says that he may one day find out that the prosecutors were purged for political reasons, and if so, he's gonna be really, really mad... (LOL)
More on Ms. Goodling:
Goodling's announcement appeared to be an unforeseen piece of bad news for Gonzales' agency, which had no immediate comment.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who is leading the Senate's investigation into the firings, said Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty told him he was misled by other Justice Department aides before he testified to Schumer's panel on Feb. 6.
A day earlier, Goodling was among those who helped McNulty prepare his testimony. Schumer has said McNulty may have given Congress incomplete or otherwise misleading information about the circumstances of the firings.
A little more than two weeks before that, Goodling helped organize the response to senators asking whether the firings were politically motivated, e-mails show. Specifically, she wanted to show that one of the fired prosecutors, Carol Lam of California, had been the subject of complaints by members of Congress.
On Jan. 18, 2007, Goodling sent an e-mail to three Justice staffers saying, "I hear there is a letter from (Sen. Dianne) Feinstein on Carol Lam a year or two ago."
"I need it ASAP," Goodling wrote.
She was later sent two letters, from Rep. Darrell Issa (news, bio, voting record), R-Calif., dated Oct. 13, 2005, and 19 House members, on Oct. 20, 2005, which both complained that Lam was too lax in prosecuting criminal illegal immigrants.
Additionally, Goodling was involved in an April 6, 2006, phone call between the Justice Department and Sen. Pete Domenici (news, bio, voting record), R-N.M., who had complained to the Bush administration and the president about David Iglesias, then the U.S. attorney in Albuquerque. Domenici had wanted Iglesias to push more aggressively on a corruption probe against Democrats before the 2006 elections.
Iglesias told Congress earlier this month that he rejected what he believed to be pressure from Domenici to rush indictments that would have hurt Democrats in the November elections.
Not a good look, Ms. Goodling.
Meanwhile, a new poll shows the American people strongly back the Congressional Gonzogate probes, including the issuing of subpoenas.
And of course, there's always another scandal waiting in the wings. Mr. Rove? You're up.
With the White House doing the opposite of damage control by insisting that the president will hang on to Alberto no matter what, I'm finding it more and more interesting to start looking at the supporting cast in the Gonzogate melodrama. So while we're looking, we might as well start with the Lee Harvey Oswald of this tawdry tale...
So who is Kyle Sampson, and what is his strange relationship to the obscure Patriot Act provision that got us into this mess in the first place?
Sampson, a Utah Mormon, had been John Ashcroft's deputy when he was attorney general. He has been friends since law school (at the University of Chicago) with Dick Cheney's daughter Elizabeth (the straight one...) After Ashcroft stepped down following the 2004 election, Gonzales helped guide nominee Alberto Gonzales through Senate confirmation, and would later do the same for President Bush's SupCo nominees. And while he is now the administration's designated scapegoat, Sampson's hometown paper, the Salt Lake Tribune, and other news outlets report the following about his role in Gonzogate, picking up from the time of Ashcroft's post-election exit:
About that time, the suggestion was floated that a number of U.S. attorneys could be replaced with Bush loyalists. Sampson opposed wholesale change but by March 2005 sent a list of targeted prosecutors to White House Counsel Harriet Miers.
And then it gets interesting...
Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney for Utah Paul Warner announced in January 2006 he would become a federal magistrate, opening a spot Sampson had long sought. An e-mail released Thursday suggests that Sampson may have tried to push Warner out of the job in early 2005 but was rebuffed by Hatch.
With Warner stepping aside in 2006, Sampson lined up the support of Gonzales and others, but Hatch recommended Brett Tolman, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Utah who was working for the Judiciary Committee at the time for Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter.
Tolman, who ultimately got the job, had in March 2006 added language to the Patriot Act renewal, at the Justice Department's request, to allow the White House to replace U.S. attorneys without Senate consent.
So Tolman wrote the provision that allowed Gonzo to mount his political purge of U.S. attorneys, and then Tolman became one of the newly minted U.S. attorneys... interesting...
As for Sampson, he could be giving voluntary sworn testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee as early as this week.
Meanwhile, Hill Republicans are continuing to walk away from Alberto, and the right wing blogosphere is starting to skate on Gonzo as well. The Carpetbagger ferrets out a few good examples, including the very succinct Ed Morrissey:
Have we had enough yet? I understand the argument that if we allow the Democrats to bounce Gonzales, they’ll just aim for more, but Gonzales made himself the target here with what looks like blatant deception. I don’t think we do ourselves any good by defending the serially changing stories coming out of Gonzales’ inept administration at Justice. One cannot support an Attorney General who misleads Congress, allows his staffers to mislead Congress, and deceives the American people, regardless of whether an R or a D follows his name or the majority control of Congress.
I will brook no excuses by commenters that Gonzalez “misspoke,” or “forgot,” or “got a note from his mother” that gave him permission to lie, or other excuses from the ever dwindling number of Bush diehards who visit this site . He is the frickin’ Attorney General of the United States fer crissakes! If there is anybody in government who needs to tell the truth, it is the guy responsible for enforcing the laws of land.
I give these righties credit for intellectual honesty. Maybe one of them will wrestle the Kool-Aid out of the hot little hands of the die-hard Bushies at Wizbang. Hell, even Michelle has gone south on Gonzo, (I'd hate to think it was because he's so suspiciously Mexican, Mizz Malkin) though she hasn't seen fit to blog about the controversy in a week ... and Miss Twit is positively apoplectic over the dropped P.R. ball (but of course, not about the lying...)
Back to the 'Bagger, who asks the right pertinent questions:
* A Republican leadership staffer told Roll Call this week, “We are not throwing ourselves on the grenade for them anymore. There’s now an attitude of ‘you created this mess, you’ve got to get yourself out of it.’”
After watching conservatives back Bush on everything from Iraq to Plame to illegal NSA wiretaps to Katrina, have we finally found the one thing the right isn’t willing to defend? And if so, isn’t it safe to assume the political pressure on the White House will be even more intense?
And if that’s so, exactly how bad is this going to get for the Bush gang?
I'd say rather worse, until they learn the central lesson of public relatons: when you're caught in a crisis in which you don't control the variables (i.e., there's more information out there that could come out to bite you, and you don't control it,) the best way to stanch the bleeding is to stop fighting, apologize, and give your critics something big. In this case, the thing to give the critics would be Gonzales' head, and the more the White House resists, the more protracted this scandal will become. I suspect that before the White House has to relent to allowing Bush's Brain to be put under oath (which will further escalate this scandal) they'll throw Alberto overboard.
I've often wondered, probably not alone, why despite dismal approval ratings and increasing political and actual chaos all around him, George W. Bush never seems to be too worried about the political future. He seems blythely unconcerned about his party's political fortunes, including the prospect that his dreadful presidency will lock Republicans out of not only the Congressional majority, but also the White House, perhaps for generations to come.
Well, maybe now we have an answer.
It appears increasingly clear, from the many scandals that have recently arisen out of the Justice Department (the mass collection of unauthorized data on Americans by the FBI, and the purging of U.S. attorneys,) that the Bush administration -- and Karl Rove specifically -- have been putting in place a sure-fire way to ensure that the White House remains in Republican hands, by rigging future elections -- without even the need of fixing the voting machines.
How have they planned to do it? By using, of all things, the nation's federal prosecutors and courts to suppress Democratic (read Black) votes in key states, and to place political operatives in positions where they can do damage to Democratic candidates, using the same legal attack strategy that was used on the Clintons when they were in office. In other words, Bush is so calm because he knows that his hatchet man is bending nearly every federal agency at his disposal to the purely political purpose of electing Republicans and suppressing Democratic votes.
WASHINGTON - Under President Bush, the Justice Department has backed laws that narrow minority voting rights and pressed U.S. attorneys to investigate voter fraud - policies that critics say have been intended to suppress Democratic votes.
Bush, his deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, and other Republican political advisers have highlighted voting rights issues and what Rove has called the "growing problem" of election fraud by Democrats since Bush took power in the tumultuous election of 2000, a race ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Since 2005, McClatchy Newspapers has found, Bush has appointed at least three U.S. attorneys who had worked in the Justice Department's civil rights division when it was rolling back longstanding voting-rights policies aimed at protecting predominantly poor, minority voters.
Another newly installed U.S. attorney, Tim Griffin in Little Rock, Ark., was accused of participating in efforts to suppress Democratic votes in Florida during the 2004 presidential election while he was a research director for the Republican National Committee. He's denied any wrongdoing.
Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the four U.S. attorneys weren't chosen only because of their backgrounds in election issues, but "we would expect any U.S. attorney to prosecute voting fraud."
Taken together, critics say, the replacement of the U.S. attorneys, the voter-fraud campaign and the changes in Justice Department voting rights policies suggest that the Bush administration may have been using its law enforcement powers for partisan political purposes. ...
And this:
Last April, while the Justice Department and the White House were planning the firings, Rove gave a speech in Washington to the Republican National Lawyers Association. He ticked off 11 states that he said could be pivotal in the 2008 elections. Bush has appointed new U.S. attorneys in nine of them since 2005: Florida, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Arkansas, Michigan, Nevada and New Mexico. U.S. attorneys in the latter four were among those fired.
Rove thanked the audience for "all that you are doing in those hot spots around the country to ensure that the integrity of the ballot is protected." He added, "A lot in American politics is up for grabs."
The department's civil rights division, for example, supported a Georgia voter identification law that a court later said discriminated against poor, minority voters. It also declined to oppose an unusual Texas redistricting plan that helped expand the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. That plan was partially reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Frank DiMarino, a former federal prosecutor who served six U.S. attorneys in Florida and Georgia during an 18-year Justice Department career, said that too much emphasis on voter fraud investigations "smacks of trying to use prosecutorial power to investigate and potentially indict political enemies."
Several former voting rights lawyers, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of antagonizing the administration, said the division's political appointees reversed the recommendations of career lawyers in key cases and transferred or drove out most of the unit's veteran attorneys.
Bradley Schlozman, who was the civil rights division's deputy chief, agreed in 2005 to reverse the career staff's recommendations to challenge a Georgia law that would have required voters to pay $20 for photo IDs and in some cases travel as far as 30 miles to obtain the ID card.
A federal judge threw out the Georgia law, calling it an unconstitutional, Jim Crow-era poll tax. ...
In other words, what we now have is a White House engaging in what amounts to widespread voter disenfranchisement different from Jim Crow era Bull Connor tactics only in their subtlety:
Former voting rights section chief Joseph Rich, however, said longtime career lawyers whose views differed from those of political appointees were routinely "reassigned or stripped of major responsibilities."
In testimony to a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing this week, Rich said that 20 of the 35 attorneys in the voting rights section have been transferred to other jobs or have left their jobs since April 2005 and a staff of 26 civil rights analysts who reviewed state laws for discrimination has been slashed to 10.
He said he has yet to see evidence of voter fraud on a scale that warrants voter ID laws, which he said are "without exception ... supported and pushed by Republicans and objected to by Democrats. I believe it is clear that this kind of law tends to suppress the vote of lower-income and minority voters."
Other former voting-rights section lawyers said that during the tenure of Alex Acosta, who served as the division chief from the fall of 2003 until he was named interim U.S. attorney in Miami in the summer of 2005, the department didn't file a single suit alleging that local or state laws or election rules diluted the votes of African-Americans. In a similar time period, the Clinton administration filed six such cases.
Those kinds of cases, Rich said, are "the guts of the Voting Rights Act."
During this week's House judiciary subcommittee hearing, critics recounted lapses in the division's enforcement. A Citizens Commission on Civil Rights study found that "the enforcement record of the voting section during the Bush administration indicates this traditional priority has been downgraded significantly, if not effectively ignored."
Again, this is much, much larger than a "pleasure of the president" series of personnel changes.
What the A.G. knew: Al Gonzales, George W. Bush and the politicization of Everything
"Alberto, you're doing a heckuva job..."
President Bush is continuing to stand behind his attorney general, Alberto Gonzales (at least publicly,) apparently bunkering in and ratcheting up the stubbornness despite the increasingly obvious fact that Mr. Gonzales is a drag on an already sinking ship of state. Here's the latest from AP:
WASHINGTON - President Bush is standing firmly behind his embattled attorney general despite Justice Department documents that show Alberto Gonzales was more involved in the decisions to fire U.S. attorneys than he previously indicated.
Gonzales said last week he was not involved in any discussions about the impending dismissals of federal prosecutors. On Friday night, however, the department disclosed Gonzales' participation in a Nov. 27 meeting where such plans were discussed.
That e-mail only added to the calls for Gonzales' ouster. ...
... At the Nov. 27 meeting, the attorney general and at least five top department officials discussed a five-step plan for carrying out the firings, Gonzales' aides said late Friday.
At that session, Gonzales signed off on the plan, drafted by his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson. Sampson resigned last week.
A Justice aide closely involved in the dismissals, White House liaison Monica Goodling, also has taken a leave of absence, two officials said.
The plan approved by Gonzales involved notifying Republican home-state senators of the impending dismissals, preparing for potential political upheaval, naming replacements and submitting them to the Senate for confirmation.
Six of the eight prosecutors who were ordered to resign are named in the plan.
Here's the problem for Alberto: He went on record more than a week ago claiming complete ignorance of the plan to fire the prosecutors, and palmed off responsibility on his chief aide, Kyle Sampson. Sampson is now being invited to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and could contradict the prior sworn testimony of Mr. Gonzales, putting the nation's chief prosecutor in the rather awkard position of having potentially lied to Congress, and to the American people.
More from the AP story:
Gonzales told reporters on March 13 that he was aware some of the dismissals were being discussed but was not involved in them.
"I knew my chief of staff was involved in the process of determining who were the weak performers — where were the districts around the country where we could do better for the people in that district, and that's what I knew," Gonzales said. "But that is in essence what I knew about the process; was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on. That's basically what I knew as the attorney general."
Later, he added: "I accept responsibility for everything that happens here within this department. But when you have 110,000 people working in the department, obviously there are going to be decisions that I'm not aware of in real time. Many decisions are delegated."
The documents' release came hours after Sampson agreed to testify at a Senate inquiry this coming week into the prosecutors' firings.
Asked to explain the difference between Gonzales' comments and his schedule, Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the attorney general had relied on Sampson to draw up the plans on the firings.
"The attorney general has made clear that he charged Mr. Sampson with directing a plan to replace U.S. attorneys where for one reason or another the department believed that we could do better," Roehrkasse said. "He was not, however, involved at the levels of selecting the particular U.S. attorneys who would be replaced."
And the bottom line, from just one of the lawmakers who have Gonzales in their crosshairs:
Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, who is heading the Senate's investigation into the firings, said, "If the facts bear out that Attorney General Gonzales knew much more about the plan than he has previously admitted, then he can no longer serve as attorney general."
Exactly.
Now over to TPM Muckraker, which links to an LAT piece revealing that part of the Justice Department political wing's plan for dealing with "political fallout" was to go to an old salt that always seems to be top of mind for Republicans: "Clinton did it too!" From the LAT Article:
Three weeks ago, Justice Department officials settled on a "talking point" to rebut the chorus of Democratic accusations that the Bush administration had wrongly injected politics into law enforcement when it dismissed eight U.S. attorneys.
Why not focus on the Clinton administration's having "fired all 93 U.S. attorneys" when Janet Reno became attorney general in March 1993? The idea was introduced in a memo from a Justice Department spokeswoman.
Of course, the argument is, as per usual, false and misleading, and beyond that, it's dangerous to the very notion of fairness under law. From ThinkP, quoting a Congressional Research Service report on the unprecedented firings:
A CRS report released yesterday examines the tenure of all U.S. Attorneys who were confirmed by the Senate between the years 1981 and 2006 to determine how many had served — and, of those, how many had been forced to resign for reasons other than a change in administration.
The answer:
– Of the 468 confirmations made by the Senate over the 25-year period, only 10 left office involuntarily for reasons other than a change in administration prior to the firings that took place in December.
– In virtually all of those 10 previous cases, serious issues of personal or professional conduct appeared to be the driving issue. Prior to December, for example, only two U.S. Attorneys were outright fired for improper, and in one case criminal, behavior. The CRS report identifies six other U.S. Attorneys who resigned during the 25-year period who were implicated in news reports of “questionable conduct.” For two others, the CRS was unable to determine the cause.
It is clear that of the four administrations that controlled the executive branch of government during the past quarter-century, only the current administration has held the view that U.S. Attorney can or should be removed absent serious cause. In no instance is there any indication of a removal because a U.S. attorney failed to meet certain political criteria, such as prosecuting cases that were considered too sensitive to partisan issues or failing to prosecute cases that would be helpful from a partisan perspective.
The innovative philosophy of the current Bush administration with respect to the service of U.S. Attorneys is worthy of the attention it is now receiving. Those eight forced resignations threaten the very basis of our justice system — to quote the words written above the pillars on the west front of the Supreme Court, “Equal Justice Under Law.”
But hey, little things like that haven't stopped the Bushies before... So let's dig deeper into the small number of Justice Department officials who have been fired before. More from Mr. Lilly's CAP analysis of the Congressional Research Service report:
Prior to December, for example, only two U.S. Attorneys were outright fired. The first was William Kennedy, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California. The Christian Science Monitor on Apr. 26, 1982 explained that he was dismissed “for charging that the Justice Department, at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency, was blocking his attempt to prosecute Mr. [Miguel] Nassar [Haro], because he had been a key CIA informant on Mexican and Central American affairs.”
The second, J. William Petro, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, was dismissed (according to the Oct. 3, 1984 edition of The New York Times) because the Department of Justice was “investigating allegations that Mr. Petro disclosed information about an indictment pending from an undercover operation and that the information reached a subject of the investigation.” Petro was later convicted of the charges.
The CRS report identifies six other U.S. Attorneys who resigned during the 25-year period who were implicated in news reports of “questionable conduct.” These included:
Frank L. McNamara, Jr., U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts who resigned because “he was the target of an internal probe,” into “whether he had lied to federal officials,” according to a Jan. 31, 1989 report in The Boston Globe.
Larry Colleton, the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Florida resigned in Jul. 1994 after he was “videotaped grabbing Jacksonville television reporter Richard Rose by the throat,” according to local press reports.
Kendall Coffey, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, resigned on May 12, 1996, according to news reports, “amid accusations that he bit a topless dancer on the arm during a visit to an adult club.”
Michael Troop, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Kentucky, who resigned to become State Police Commissioner. Later reports indicated that he was under investigation at the time by the Justice Department for sexual harassment.
Karl Kasey, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia, who according to news reports “abruptly left office after the Justice Department began investigating e-mails in which offered to secretly assist a GOP candidate.”
In two other cases, there were no apparent issues of personal or professional misconduct. Michael Yamaguchi, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, appears to have been a victim of disapproving federal judges. The CRS report sites news reports in 1998 stating that he was “apparently squeezed out by the local federal bench and his bosses in the U.S. Justice Department.”
The only instance other than the recent firings in which there was no apparent explanation for a forced resignation also occurred during the Bush administration. Thomas DiBiagio, U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland resigned in 2005. Recent news reports indicate that he “was forced from office,” but there has been no explanation as to why. ...
In other words, the actions taken, we now know with the full knowledge of Mr. Gonzales, were both unprecedented, and brazenly political, in a manner we have not seen since the Reagan administration's firing of a U.S. attorney who was accusing THEM of wrongdoing...
So the "Clinton did it, too" canard just won't wash.
NBC News is reporting that the Senate Judiciary Committee has written a letter to White House Counsel Fred Fielding, asking the Bushies to reiterate whether their lame, no-transcript, no oaths, private "meet and greet" offer is their final offer.
Meanwhile, Albertcito says he must stay on as attorney general ... for the children...
GONZALES: I’m not going to resign. I’m going to stay focused on protecting our kids. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done around the country. The department is responsible for protecting our kids, for making our neighborhoods safe, for protecting our country against attacks of terrorism, to going after gangs, going after drug dealers. I’m staying focussed on that. ...
Ah, the children. Thank God they've got Alberto to take care of them. Let's just hope they're "Bushie" enough to actually merit his aid...
Oh, and the Senate OK'd the issuance of subpoenas today, just like the House did yesterday.
And guess who the next Senate Judiciary Committee star witness is going to be? Hellooooo, Kyle Sampson!
Meanwhile, TPMM rounds up a few hot takes on where this thing could go next...
First spotted by a commenter on the blog Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall reports there is an 18-day gap in the over 3,000 emails released by the Department of Justice pertaining to the attorney firing scandal.
The gap covers the days between November 15 and December 4, 2006. So far, only one email has been found dated within the 18 days among those released in Monday night's document dump. The lone email, from November 29, 2006, was one forwarded by Justice official Michael Elston to a fellow staffer asking for an attached review document to be printed.
"The firing calls went out on December 7th. But the original plan was to start placing the calls on November 15th," notes Marshall. "So those eighteen days are pretty key ones."
Politico reporters Mike Allen and John Bresnahan also picked up on the gap. They surmise that the missing communication covers "a critical period, as the White House and Justice Department reviewed -- then approved -- which U.S. attorneys would be fired, while also developing a political and communications strategy for countering any fallout from the firings."
"There are enough disgruntled employees at Justice ... that the information is going to come out. The White House needs to decide if it's going to come out 'drip, drip, drip' or if they're going to get it all out." -- Senator Chuck Schumer, appearing on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" on Wednesday
Chuck Schumer did his best Tony Soprano tonight, commenting on the White House's ridiculous 'offer the Congress can't accept' -- which can be paraphrased as "sure, you can talk to our staffers, but you can't record it, create transcripts, or put them under oath"...
Clearly, the Dems aren't going to go for that okey-doke. And the White House is sounding awfully desperate with those "please accept our generous offer" entreaties.
Why?
Because they know, just as Schumer knew when he made the above comment to Keith, that there will be more disclosures.
As former U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins has written, "Once the public detects partisanship in one important decision, they will follow the natural inclination to question every decision made, whether there is a connection or not."
Today, the nonpartisan congressional watchdog Democracy 21 sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty asking whether there had been political interference in the investigation and prosecution of Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
"Based on issues that have been raised in the firing of the eight U.S Attorneys , we're all in a position to want some assurance that there hasn't been political interference in the case," Fred Wertheimer, Democracy 21's president, told me. "This still remains the worse congressional corruption scandal in 30 years. There are lesser players who have been convicted. But there are still big players here, including sitting and former members of Congress whose cases apparently have not yet been resolved. "
In a detailed, 10-page letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) signed by Kathleen Sullivan, chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, and Paul Twomey, a lawyer for the Democrats, they argue that the investigation, which targeted prominent operatives in the Republican Party, was stalled and mishandled.
On Election Day in 2002, Republicans schemed to jam the phone banks for Democratic get out the vote efforts. Two Republicans involved in the plan pled guilty, and James Tobin, formerly the New England Regional Political Director for the Republican National Committee, was convicted for his role. The case took years to play out; the first guilty pleas in the case were not until the summer of 2004, and Tobin was not indicted until after the 2004 election.
One of the reasons the investigation was stalled, Democrats argue, is that "all decisions had to be reviewed by the Attorney General himself" -- first John Ashcroft and then Alberto Gonzales. To back up that claim, the Democrats say that lawyers working on the case were told by prosecutors that delays in the case were due to the extreme difficulty in obtaining authorization from higher levels at DOJ for any and all actions in the case.
A lawyer for one of the Republicans in the case backs up that claim. John Durken, the lawyer for Allen Raymond, a Republican whose consulting firm managed the jamming, says that the lead prosecutor in the case told him during one meeting that Ashcroft was involved in every decision. "He said, 'Every decision in this case goes all the way up to Ashcroft’s desk.'" Durken told me that such a fact didn't "surprise" him, given the political nature of the case.
... The Democrats' other grievances, which they lay out in the letter, are 1) that the Justice Department bogged the investigation down by assigning only one FBI agent to the case -- and that agent was part-time 2) that the DoJ's refusal to prosecute the organziations responsible for the jamming, the New Hampshire Republican Party and the Republican National Committee, violated Justice Department guidelines, and 3) the DoJ failed to follow leads that led to higher-level Republican involvement.
Dividing along partisan lines, a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee has voted to authorize subpoenas for Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, and other senior White House aides as part of the congressional investigation into the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys.
The commerical and administrative law subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), also authorized document subpoenas for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, White House Chief of Staff Jashua Bolton, and White House Counsel Fred Fielding.
Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) now can issue the subpoenas whenever he wants, although he indicated at the hearing that Democrats were still negotiating with Fielding on getting Rove. the White House deputy chief of staff, and Miers, the former White House counsel, to testify under oath before the panel on the firings.
"We don't have a timetable" for issuing the subpoenas, Conyers told reporters following the hearing.
Conyers, Sanchez, and other Democrats on the Judiciary have rejected an offer by Fielding to allow Rove, Miers, William Kelley, deputy White House counsel, and J. Scott Jennings, a special assistant to President Bush in the White House political affairs office, be interviewed informally by members and committee staff. Under Fielding's proposal, those interviews would not take place under oath, and a White House lawyers would be present.
Sanchez complained that Fielding's proposal "allows limited access to witnesses, no access to key documents, and no testimony under oath. 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."
Conyers said having the subpoenas ready to go acts like "a backstop" in the panel's negotiations with Fielding, and he pointed out that the Justice Department had failed to meet a Friday deadline to turn over all documents in its possession related to the firings. Democrats complained that the 3,000 pages of documents turned over by Justice on Monday night are heavily redacted.
The Senate Judiciary Committee debates following suit tomorrow.
Update: Here's a link to the text of Bush's presser today regarding Gonzalesgate. So far, Dubya is taking a defiant posture, although I detected more fight in him regarding Karl Rove than Al Gonzales at his feisty media avail.
Today I'm also announcing the following steps my administration is taking to correct the record and demonstrate our willingness to work with the Congress. First, the Attorney General and his key staff will testify before the relevant congressional committees to explain how the decision was made and for what reasons. Second, we're giving Congress access to an unprecedented variety of information about the process used to make the decision about replacing eight of the 93 U.S. attorneys.
In the last 24 hours, the Justice Department has provided the Congress more than 3,000 pages of internal Justice Department documents, including those reflecting direct communications with White House staff. This, in itself, is an extraordinary level of disclosure of an internal agency in White House communications.
Third, I recognize there is significant interest in the role the White House played in the resignations of these U.S. attorneys. Access to White House staff is always a sensitive issue. The President relies upon his staff to provide him candid advice. The framers of the Constitution understood this vital role when developing the separate branches of government. And if the staff of a President operated in constant fear of being hauled before various committees to discuss internal deliberations, the President would not receive candid advice, and the American people would be ill-served.
Yet, in this case, I recognize the importance of members of Congress having -- the importance of Congress has placed on understanding how and why this decision was made. So I'll allow relevant committee members on a bipartisan basis to interview key members of my staff to ascertain relevant facts. In addition to this offer, we will also release all White House documents and emails involving direct communications with the Justice Department or any other outside person, including members of Congress and their staff, related to this issue. These extraordinary steps offered today to the majority in Congress demonstrate a reasonable solution to the issue. However, we will not go along with a partisan fishing expedition aimed at honorable public servants.
Let's rewind that last paragraph ...
In addition to this offer, we will also release all White House documents and emails involving direct communications with the Justice Department or any other outside person, including members of Congress and their staff, related to this issue.Might I interpret that as a threat if I were a Republican member of Congress considering coming out against the attorney general? Yes, I might.
Okay, now, let's re-set. The president is going to prevent Karl Rove from testifying. He's going to protect him. Al Gonzales on the other hand, is going to the Hill, and apparently, Bushie is giving him one last chance to save his job. But will it work? Well, there's the latest reporting from the good folks at The Politico:
The White House and top GOP officials are bracing for a lengthy battle over executive privilege and the likely resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in the escalating fight over the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, several key Republicans said Tuesday.
With Democrats demanding public testimony of top White House aides, including Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and the White House insisting on private interviews only, the GOP officials said the controversy over the fired prosecutors is likely to intensify and prompt Gonzales to step aside.
President Bush on Tuesday called Gonzales, offering a public show of support. And White House press secretary Tony Snow said that news reports about a search for a replacement were "flat false."
But people involved in the process to sound out potential replacements for Gonzales said they had not talked to Snow. A GOP loyalist close to the White House said the process went on ice after Bush made his call to Gonzales. "They were reaching out," the operative said. "Now, we're in lockdown. We're just waiting. They've reached out to everyone they need to reach out to and are waiting to get a 'yes' from someone."
The operative assumption, the GOP source said, is that Gonzales will go but that he will do so on his own schedule. The first stage in finding a replacement is gauging who is available among the well-established lawyers under consideration, most of whom have previously been confirmed by the Senate. "I think it is going to come down to who is willing to take the job," said the source.
Meanwhile, support for Gonzales on Capitol Hill continued to wane. A member of the House Republican leadership, speaking on the condition of anonymity at a luncheon with 13 reporters, spoke scathingly of the "drip, drip, drip" produced by the furor over the attorneys.
"I can't imagine that he's going to be around a whole lot longer," said the House Republican leader. "It seems like a leak about developing a short list of replacements, combined with a direct call from the president, are sort of the two indications that your days are numbered. I just don't see him lasting through this current maelstrom.
So is Bush kicking Gonzales or punting? So far, he's punting?
Bush's call essentially leaves it up to Gonzales whether to try to hang on to his office at a time when Democratic lawmakers are gunning for him and many Republicans have given up on him.
A Republican source said Tuesday that Bush is "unmoved," and that Gonzales will not be pushed out or fired. Bush telephoned him from the Oval Office at 7:15 a.m., and aides said he "reaffirmed his strong support and backing" for his longtime friend and aide.
The White House is preparing for a showdown with Congress over Gonzalesgate. The Bushies say they are willing to provide public enemies number 1 and 2 (Karl Rove and Harriet Miers), for "interviews" -- but not for testimony -- and not under oath. That won't wash with Pat Leahy and company. Not even a little bit.
According to updated reporting by The Politco's Mike Allen, the White House also ordered the search by GOP surrogates for possible Gonzales replacements to stop -- at least publicly, and at least for now.
Bush is making a tough sounding statement to the press right now, saying he will oppose any attempts to subpoena White House officials, and to avoid giving in to a "partisan fishing expedition." Apparently, Bush is taking his cues from right wing bloggers, who are urging him to fight back, rather than capitulate to the growing Gonzales scandal. The next step will be to begin reigning in renegate Republican lawmakers, who are joining to "dump Gonzales" bandwagon (the latest was Tom Tancredo today).
The saga continues...
Meanwhile, the Senate has already stripped the A.G.'s office of the power (via an obscure provision in the Patriot Act II which was inserted by an operative placed, probably by Karl Rove, into the staff of Arlen Specter) to appoint interim U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation. And the House Judiciary Committee is mulling stripping the FBI of some Patriot Act powers over its abuses of warrentless searches.
Back to Gonzalesgate. What's behind all the posturing? The WaPo's Dan Froomkin reports:
President Bush's message of support this morning for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has all the trappings of a carefully staged hail-Mary, with the president giving his friend one last chance to rally enough Republican support to ride out the storm.
But the indications remain that Bush may well toss Gonzales overboard, especially if that's the only way he can see to prevent the scandal from being pursued deeper into the West Wing.
Or, as Ed Henry reported on CNN this morning: "As one top Republican told me last night, a Republican close to the White House, saying basically the handwriting is on the wall for Gonzales. And the bottom line is if this White House has to choose between protecting Karl Rove or protecting Alberto Gonzales in order for this controversy to go away, they'll choose Karl Rove, protecting him. Because the bottom line is they can get another attorney general, they can't get another Karl Rove. He's got his hands in so many things here. He's the lead adviser to the president."
So what will win out? Republican pragmatism or a stubborn president who is now Alberto Gonzales' only supporter? And can Bush's loyalty make a severely wounded attorney general an effective judicial advocate when he has lost the confidence of literally everyone else?
The Daily Background has begun sifting through the White House docu-dump and here's what they've found so far:
Exclusive: Cunningham complained about Lam to Attorney General before he plead guilty
Among the documents buried in the enormous document dump, The Daily Background has discovered, is an letter from 19 members of Congress to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales concerning then-US Attorney Carol Lam. Lam was at the time involved in a high-profile corruption investigation Republican Representative Randy “Duke” Cunningham.
The 19 members of Congress wrote Gonzales in October of 2005 complaining that they felt Lam was too lax on illegal immigration. One of the members of Congress who signed the letter complaining about Lam was Congressman Cunningham, who is now serving an eight year prison term after Lam successfully prosecuted him.
Barely a month after the 19 Congressmen (Cunningham included) requested to meet with Gonzales specifically to complain about Lam’s prosecution policy on immigration-related matters, Cunningham plead guilty to two felony counts of criminal conspiracy and tax evasion.
At the time Cunningham and the other 18 Congressmen complained about Lam, Cunningham was still claiming innocence in the corruption probe that had intensified just as the complaint to Attorney General Gonzales was made.
“The U.S. Attorney in San Diego has stated that the office will not prosecute a criminal alien unless they have previously been convicted of two felonies in the district” the letter of complaint read. Lam, the was the US Attorney for Southern California at the time, and had received favorable job reviews from the Department of Justice before she was fired after successfully convicting Cunningham.
The Department of Justice had previously said in a written review of her work that Lam was “An effective manager and respected leader… [her] Strategic Plan and District Priorities were appropriate.” One of Lam’s priorities was perusing the corruption investigation that saw Cunningham in prison and the indictments of three other alleged coconspirators.
Poor Alberto ... he cooperated in a White House scheme to take out U.S. attorneys who weren't exhibiting sufficient loyalty to the president -- loyalty, apparently best shown by prosecuting Democrats and holding back on corrupt Republicans in advance of the 2006 midterm elections. Now, Alberto's head is on the chopping block, while the probably mastermind of the scheme, Karl Rove, will, as in the Scooter Libby debacle, get off scott free.
The latest developments:
First, from the outfit that broke this story in the first place, Joshua Micah Marshall's TPM Muckraker, we have last night's document dump by the Bush administration, which consists of 3,000 pages of emails related to the U.S. attorney purge. TPMM is asking its readers to help them sift through the pile. You can do so here.
Q You said this morning that you hope that -- the White House hopes that Alberto Gonzales stays as Attorney General. Your comment has been seen as a rather tepid endorsement. Has he --
MR. SNOW: No, I didn't --
Q Has he offered his resignation?
MR. SNOW: No, he hasn't. Let me -- a couple of things. And the President has not spoken to him since he spoke to him in Mexico. What I was trying to do is, you ask a hypothetical question about things that are going to happen over the next two years. None of us knows what's going to happen to us over the next 21 months, and that's why it's an impossible question to answer: Will somebody stay throughout? However, the reason I said, we hope so, is we hope so. He has the confidence of the President. But I do not -- as a pure and simple matter, nobody is prophetic enough to know what the next 21 months hold.
Q And there's backing away from him?
MR. SNOW: No.
Q There's full confidence?
MR. SNOW: Yes. ...
Sure Tony. You're really selling it. Now for the hottest news of the day, from The Politico:
Republican officials operating at the behest of the White House have begun seeking a possible successor to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, whose support among GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill has collapsed, according to party sources familiar with the discussions.
Among the names floated Monday by administration officials are Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and White House anti-terrorism coordinator Frances Townsend. Former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson is a White House prospect. So is former solicitor general Theodore B. Olson, but sources were unsure whether he would want the job.
On Monday night, Republican officials said two other figures who are being seriously considered are Securities and Exchange Committee Chairman Chris Cox, who is former chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee and is popular with conservatives; and former Attorney General William P. Barr, who served under President George H.W. Bush from 1991 to 1993 and is now general counsel of Verizon Communications.
Republican sources also disclosed that it is now a virtual certainty that Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty, whose incomplete and inaccurate congressional testimony about the prosecutors helped precipitate the crisis, will also resign shortly. Officials were debating whether Gonzales and McNulty should depart at the same time or whether McNulty should go a day or two after Gonzales. Still known as "The Judge" for his service on the Texas Supreme Court, Gonzales is one of the few remaining original Texans who came to Washington with President Bush.
In a sign of Republican despair, GOP political strategists on Capitol Hill said that it is too late for Gonzales' departure to head off a full-scale Democratic investigation into the motives and timing behind the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.
"Democrats smell blood in the water, and (Gonzales') resignation won't stop them," said a well-connected Republican Senate aide. "And on our side, no one's going to defend him. All we can do is warn Democrats against overreaching."
And as I've said before:
A main reason Gonzales is finding few friends even among Republicans is that he has long been regarded with suspicion by conservatives who have questioned his ideological purity. In the past, these conservatives warned the White House against nominating him for the Supreme Court. Now they're using the controversy over the firing of eight federal prosecutors to take out their pent-up frustrations with how he has handled his leadership at Justice and how the White House has treated Congress.
Complaints range from his handling of immigration cases to his alleged ceding of power in the department to career officials instead of movement conservatives.
Still believeing Tony Snow?
Meanwhile, the House Judiciary Committee is also working on the concurrent Gonzales scandal involving the White House's scuttling of a probe of the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program by denying the necessary security clearances. Read John Conyers' letter to Gonzales on the subject here.
And read all of the HJC's letters to the White House and A.G. here.
Oh, and just when you thought it couldn't get any muckier, there's this:
U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald was ranked among prosecutors who had "not distinguished themselves" on a Justice Department chart sent to the White House in March 2005, when he was in the midst of leading the CIA leak investigation that resulted in the perjury conviction of a vice presidential aide, administration officials said yesterday.
The ranking placed Fitzgerald below "strong U.S. Attorneys . . . who exhibited loyalty" to the administration but above "weak U.S. Attorneys who . . . chafed against Administration initiatives, etc.," according to Justice documents.
The chart was the first step in an effort to identify U.S. attorneys who should be removed. Two prosecutors who received the same ranking as Fitzgerald were later fired, documents show.
Fitzgerald's ranking adds another dimension to the prosecutor firings, which began as a White House proposal to remove all 93 U.S. attorneys after the 2004 elections and evolved into the coordinated dismissal of eight last year, a move that has infuriated lawmakers and led to calls for Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to resign.
The Justice Department last night gave the House and Senate Judiciary committees 3,000 pages of new documents related to the firings, including one e-mail that says Gonzales was "extremely upset" by Senate testimony Feb. 6 from his deputy, Paul J. McNulty. Gonzales felt that "some of the . . . statements were inaccurate," the e-mail says.
Justice officials said Gonzales specifically disagreed with McNulty's statement that a Little Rock prosecutor was fired to make way for a GOP operative. They also said the new documents show that political motivations were not a factor in the firings.
The latest revelations came amid reports that the White House has already launched a search for Gonzales's replacement and that support for the attorney general among Republicans in Congress is fading fast. One GOP strategist with close ties to the White House said last night that it is likely Gonzales will leave and that White House counsel Fred F. Fielding already has potential replacements in mind. ...
I wonder how Fitzy would have been ranked had he actually indicted Karl Rove. So does Fitzgerald really suck?
Mary Jo White, who supervised Fitzgerald when she served as the U.S. attorney in Manhattan and who has criticized the firings, said ranking him as a middling prosecutor "lacks total credibility across the board."
"He is probably the best prosecutor in the nation -- certainly one of them," said White, who worked in the Clinton and Bush administrations. "It casts total doubt on the whole process. It's kind of the icing on the cake."
Fitzgerald has been widely recognized for his pursuit of criminal cases against al-Qaeda's terrorist network before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and he drew up the official U.S. indictment against Osama bin Laden. He was named as special counsel in the CIA leak case in December 2003 by then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who had recused himself.
Fitzgerald also won the Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service in 2002 under Ashcroft.
New emails elucidate the sinster connection between Foggo, of the nine fingers, and the doom of one of the Gonzales Eight. Sayeth the WaPo:
The U.S. attorney in San Diego notified the Justice Department of search warrants in a Republican bribery scandal last May 10, one day before the attorney general's chief of staff warned the White House of a "real problem" with her, a Democratic senator said yesterday.
The prosecutor, Carol S. Lam, was dismissed seven months later as part of an effort by the Justice Department and the White House to fire eight U.S. attorneys.
A Justice spokesman said there was no connection between Lam's firing and her public corruption investigations, and pointed to criticisms of Lam for her record on prosecuting immigration cases.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said in a television appearance yesterday that Lam "sent a notice to the Justice Department saying that there would be two search warrants" in a criminal investigation of defense contractor Brent R. Wilkes and Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who had just quit as the CIA's top administrator amid questions about his ties to disgraced former GOP congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham.
The next day, May 11, D. Kyle Sampson, then chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, sent an e-mail message to William Kelley in the White House counsel's office saying that Lam should be removed as quickly as possible, according to documents turned over to Congress last week.
"Please call me at your convenience to discuss the following," Sampson wrote, referring to "[t]he real problem we have right now with Carol Lam that leads me to conclude that we should have someone ready to be nominated on 11/18, the day her 4-year term expires."
The FBI raided Foggo's home and former CIA office on May 12. He was indicted along with Wilkes on fraud and money-laundering charges on Feb. 13 -- two days before Lam left as U.S. attorney.
The revelation that Lam took a major step in the Foggo probe one day before Sampson's e-mail message was sent to the White House raises further questions about the decision to fire her, Feinstein suggested.
"There were clearly U.S. attorneys that were thorns in the side for one reason or another of the Justice Department," Feinstein said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "And they decided, by strategy, in one fell swoop, to get rid of seven of them on that day, December the 7th."
A Justice spokesman yesterday referred questions about the meaning of the "real problem" e-mail to Sampson's attorney, Bradford Berenson, who declined to comment.
Meanwhile, the good folks at Talking Points Memo's TPMMuckraker, who have been way out ahead of the MSM on this story, have uncovered the apparent golden rule of firing U.S. attorneys: the better they are, the faster they go. On the David Iglesias ouster:
It's becoming one of the central rules of the U.S. attorney purge scandal: whatever "performance related" complaint the administration claims as the justification for a U.S. attorney's firing, it's actually an area of performance for which that U.S. attorney was lauded.
In this instance, the White House has said that U.S. Attorney David Iglesias of New Mexico was removed in part due to his handling of voter fraud complaints. That's backed up by the numerous instances of powerful New Mexico Republicans (including Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM)) complaining to Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales, and President Bush about Iglesias' decision not to prosecute certain cases of voter fraud.
What does this mean? It means that Iglesias must have been lauded by the Justice Department for his handling of voter fraud cases. And not just lauded -- but cited as an example for U.S. attorneys across the country.
The post makes similar cases on the firings of attorneys Lam and McKay, and they conclude that:
One of the more remarkable aspects of this story, indeed, is that the fact that the Justice Department chose a small group of the most distinguished U.S. attorneys in the country and then tried to portray them as incompetent. As you can see, it's been a losing effort. And in every case where the cover story has been blown, it's revealed political motivations for the firing.
So what's next? Like Chuck Schumer, I predict that Al Gonzales won't be attorney general a week from now. As for this scandal, unfortuately for the Bush administration, it won't die with Gonzales' federal government career.
I guess Britney's not the only disfunctional one... nor is she the only slutty one.
