At the end of the day

AP: "Candidates Scramble to Reach Voters"

Sign of the times -- "Bush’s abuse of signing statements has been a constitutional mess for several years now — with more than 151 signing statements challenging 1149 provisions of laws, Bush is without rival in American history — but this week, matters grew particularly ugly." Seems Bush intends to ignore certain portions of a defense authorization bill. Meaning he's above the law. More at The Carpetbagger Report.

U.S. attorney scandal -- The Wisconsin Senate voted unanimously to reimburse Georgia Thompson $228,793 for her wrongful prosecution by one of the DOJ's loyal Bushies. "And remember that efforts by Congress to investigate the Justice Department's handling of the case -- in addition to other possible cases of selective prosecution -- have been firmly rebuffed (with the exception of the disclosure of one telling email)." From Paul Kiel.

Get the Swoop -- Economy is on the front-burner at the WH: "President Bush intervened forcibly to convince an initially reluctant Federal Reserve to reduce interest rates.... On foreign affairs: "One senior official commented privately to us about Secretary of State Rice: 'She is there but not there.'" Concerns over Pakistan and Afghanistan "are now concentrated.... ...Admiral Fallon has just returned from a visit to Pakistan where he held discussions with the new Army Chief of Staff General Ashfaq Kayani." Special ops to deploy to Pakistan "under nominal Pakistani command. US officials have noted... Musharraf’s position continues to weaken. They are unimpressed by any of the civilian alternatives and would be content to accept a new military leader." Swoop

Digby discussed the Reagan myth and it's the same ol' conservative story -- "They get into office, cut taxes on the rich and steal taxpayer money for their [wealthy] contributors."

Oil bonanza -- Mobil-Exxon "beat its own record for the highest profit ever recorded by a U.S. company, with net income rising 3 percent to $40.6 billion last year.... ...Exxon has benefited from a near-doubling of oil prices, from a low of around $50 a barrel in early 2007 to almost $100 by the end of the year - the single biggest jump in oil prices in any one year." Via TP: "Climate Progress notes that the other Big Five oil giants — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Shell — have seen similar trends."

Merrill Lynch in a pinch -- MA Sec of State William Galvin "filed a civil fraud complaint against Merrill a day after the firm took the unusual step of agreeing to reimburse Springfield for losses on the investments.... ...An official in Mr. Galvin’s office said the Springfield case was part of a larger investigation into Merrill’s sales of similar investments to other Massachusetts towns and cities." NYT

Playing favorites -- BTD at TalkLeft: "...blogs should not be about favorite candidates. It should try to persuade and/or pressure Dems, candidates and officeholders, on the issues that matter to them. In 2007, I was very critical of the blogs' performance on withdrawal from Iraq. Why? Because it was candidate centric, not issue centric.... ...There is nothing more important that we can do, as citizens, activists or bloggers than fight to pressure DEMOCRATS to do the right thing on OUR issues.... ...It's more important BY FAR than 'fighting' for your favorite pol because your favorite pol will ALWAYS, I mean ALWAYS, disappoint you."

Those killed in the dual suicide bomb attacks in separate Baghdad markets rises to "as many as 100 people." McClatchy Newspapers questioned, "Were Baghdad bombers willing suicides or victims?"

U.S. troop cuts in Iraq may be put on hold according to Gen. Petraeus. Senior Pentagon officials countered by saying "that President Bush [should] also consider the stress on U.S. ground forces and other global military risks when determining future troop levels." Chairman of the JCoS, Adm. Michael Mullen: "I find all the talk about a freeze or a pause [in troop cuts] in Iraq so interesting." More remarks at WaPo.

[That's all...no more after the jump.]

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At the end of the day

Today is the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Looking to 2008 and beyond, "The presidential election is about more than the candidates...Who do you want to make the next Supreme Court appointment?" More from Bluegal at C&L.

Lobbyists on board -- Obama's national co-chair Jim Hodges "is registered to lobby for Hillenbrand Partners, a Chicago-based company that does business with the Federal Home Loan Bank in Atlanta." Others at AP. However, no one rivals super lobby magnet, K Street McCain.

FISA and telecom immunity -- Hillary and Obama have "pledged to support a Dodd-led filibuster." Will they? Repubs think they can "bully and scare the Democrats into passing a law that has everything" Bush wants. Who's the ringleader? Sen. Kitt Bond (R-MO), "vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is at the center." Calling for help, Jane Hamsher asked John Edwards to take the lead.

James Wolcott wrote about the economic meltdown and the "festive run-up to Armageddon" via Kunstler. Wolcott concluded, "Who can we thank in Washington for the mess we're in?" Many. But don't forget Dickhead.

The probe into the firings of nine U.S. attorneys deepened via "a sprawling inquiry launched by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) and the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR).... Investigators from these offices have been questioning whether senior officials lied to Congress, violated the criminal provisions in the Hatch Act, tampered with witnesses preparing to testify to Congress, obstructed justice, took improper political considerations into account during the hiring and firing of U.S. attorneys and created widespread problems in the department’s Civil Rights Division, according to several people familiar with the investigation." (h/t Laura Rozen)

Probation officers recommended that Brent Wilkes get 60 years in prison for his part in the Duke Cunningham bribery scandal. Crime doesn't pay unless your name is Bush or Cheney.

Padilla got 17-year sentence that "[marked] a major setback in a terrorism prosecution for the Justice Department." Judge Marcia G. Cooke "criticized the government's treatment of Padilla during the time it held him without charges" and cited "'harsh' conditions that Padilla suffered for 3 1/2 years after he was arrested in 2002."

Letter to President Pervez Musharraf from 100 retired senior officers of the Pakistan Ex-Servicemen's Society -- Resign! McClatchy

Arab Jabour, Iraq -- The "first fatality inflicted by a roadside bomb on an MRAP, the new Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected armored vehicle.... ...more than 1,500 [MRAPs] in Iraq now, and the military plans to purchase more than 15,000 of them at a cost of $22.4 billion." NYT

Center for Public Integrity launched a website and a searchable database of 385,000 words on prewar Iraq misinformation hyped by Bush and top officials -- Cheney, Rice, Fleischer, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Powell, and McClellan.

CNN headline -- "Black women voters face tough choices." It's Obama vs. Hillary. Ahem! Don't policies matter? (h/t Kieran)

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It's finally happened....my irony-meter is broken

The books that tell the dirty little secrets about the Bush administration and the John Stuart Mill/ Utilitarian Machiavellian, win-at-any-cost, depraved and debased nature of the modern incarnation of the GOP.

Funny enough - they are the only books about the GOP that are selling - Karl Rove made the rounds trying to sell a book idea with a high-powered rep and got no takers. Ann-thrax Coulter-geist went to the well one too many times, and her latest book has totally tanked. Total sales have not even risen to the level that they could be called anemic. Even the choir has told the preacher to shut the hell up already.

The one that I already ordered an advance copy of that doesn't even publish until next month is How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative, which tells the story of the 2002 New Hampshire Senate Race. The book is a tell-all by the operative who committed the election tampering. He believes that the decision to tamper with the dead-heat election reaches high up in the national party, and that when it unraveled they conspired to hang it all on him.

I don't have a copy yet - but McClatchy got hold of one:

[Keep reading to find out what finally broke my irony meter...]

The 2002 New Hampshire Senate race, in which GOP Rep. John Sununu edged Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen by 19,000 votes, was among several targeted by Republicans seeking to win control of the U.S. Senate.

Raymond said those who've tried to make him the fall guy for the New Hampshire scheme failed to recognize that e-mails, phone records and other evidence documented the complicity of a top state GOP official and the Republican National Committee's northeast regional director.

Both men were later convicted of charges related to the phone harassment, along with Raymond and an Idaho phone bank operator. Defense lawyers have since won a retrial for James Tobin, the former regional director for both the RNC and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

A lawyer for Tobin didn't respond to phone messages.

Various GOP organizations have paid high-powered Washington lawyers in excess of $6 million to defend Tobin, and to fight a civil law suit brought against the GOP by the Democratic Party as a result of the election tampering. The cash outlay alone gives the impression that it might go higher. "Any tactic that didn't pass the smell test would never see the light of day without, — at the very least, the approval of an RNC attorney," he wrote.

A lawyer representing the Democratic party said that phone records show that Tobin called Rove's political shop in the White House a total of 22 times in the 24 hours before and after the jamming. When asked about the calls under oath, Tobin exercised his fifth amendment right against self incrimination.

Raymond said it was Tobin who first phoned him 2 1/2 weeks before the election and asked if he could jam Democrats' phone lines, connecting him with Charles McGee, the executive director of the New Hampshire GOP.

However, he said, when he phoned Tobin after Sununu's 19,000-vote election victory to tell him that a Manchester, N.H., police officer was looking into the scheme, Tobin responded, "I don't know what you're talking about."

Raymond said he was seething with anger in the ensuing weeks as he read news reports of McGee denying knowledge of the scheme.

In early 2003, Raymond recalled, the state GOP wrote to demand its money back.

"They were going to throw me under the bus," Raymond wrote, "but first they wanted to check my pockets to see if there was any cash there."

Raymond and McGee pleaded guilty to harassment charges. Their cooperation with investigators led to Tobin's conviction.

Raymond predicted that political dirty tricks "will only get tougher, nastier, more brutal" in coming elections.

As for his three months in a Pennsylvania prison, he wrote: "After 10 full years inside the GOP, 90 days among honest criminals wasn't really any great ordeal."

*************************

And this is what broke my irony-meter...

You might recall that a while back I was quite obsessed with the Department of Justice scandal, and specifically Bradley Schlozman, who blew into my town and started tampering with elections that I participated in. Yeah. I kinda took it personal...

Well! File this one under the heading "It all Depends on Whose Ox is Getting Gored"!!!

While in Kansas City the U.S. Attorney promptly got down to business and made with the filing of specious suits on flimsy evidence; in New Hampshire, the DoJ delayed prosecuting Tobin until after the 2004 election, so they could protect top GOP operatives from the scandal until the votes were cast and counted! Federal prosecutor Todd Hinnen was hindered from bringing charges against the New Hampshire Republican Party by officials at main Justice. Not only that, but weeks before the election he was told to ask a judge to halt action temporarily in a Democratic Party civil suit against the GOP so that it wouldn't hurt the investigation, even though Hinnen had expressed no concerns that it would.

Tobin's lawyer, a former Pentagon general counsel named Terry O'Donnell was in contact with senior DoJ officials even prior to Tobin's indictment.

The House Judiciary Committee started investigating the role of partisan politics in the investigation and indictment in October.

An official with detailed knowledge of the investigation into the 2002 Election-Day scheme said the inquiry sputtered for months after a prosecutor sought approval to indict James Tobin, the northeast regional coordinator for the Republican National Committee.

The phone-jamming operation was aimed at preventing New Hampshire Democrats from rounding up voters in the close U.S. Senate race between Republican Rep. John Sununu and Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen. Sununu's 19,000-vote victory helped the GOP regain control of the Senate.

While there were guilty pleas in the New Hampshire investigation prior to the 2004 presidential election, involvement of the national GOP wasn't confirmed. A Manchester, N.H., policeman quickly traced the jamming to Republican political operatives in 2003 and forwarded the evidence to the Justice Department for what ordinarily would be a straightforward case.

However, the official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, told McClatchy that senior Justice Department officials slowed the inquiry. The official didn't know whether top department officials ordered the delays or what motivated those decisions.

Is anyone else just simply non-fucking-plussed by this point? Holy chocolate-covered Christ, how god-damned far does it all go? Is there a single aspect of public life that these fiends haven't tainted?

Yeah, I can't think of one either...But our Democratic "leaders" still won't put impeachment back on the table?

WTF is up with that???

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Senator Domenici Announces He Will Not Seek Reelection

Wednesday afternoon, Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico became the fourth Class II Republican Senator to announce his retirement from the upper chamber since the Republicans lost the majority in both houses in the Great Republican Rout of 2006™. Wayne Allard of Colorado, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and John Warner of Virginia have previously announced that they will not seek reelection in 2008.

Lets revisit recent history and make sure we view the Domenici retirement through the appropriate lens, shall we?

(keep reading)

Domenici announces the end of his long career under a cloud of scandal and possible future criminal indictment stemming from the Department of Justice U.S. Attorneys firings. In March, Domenici retained high-powered Washington criminal defense attorney Lee Blalock to represent him in the DoJ investigation, where he is accused of attempting to pressure a U.S. Attorney into using his office to influence the midterm elections. Fired U.S. Attorney David Iglesias said in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he felt "leaned on" and "sickened" when Domenici called him seeking information about an investigation of a local Democrat. Specifically, Domenici asked if charges would be filed before the election, and when Iglesias told him they would not, Domenici said “That’s too bad.” And hung up.

David Iglesias – the real-life person the Tom Cruise character in A Few Good Men is based on – became one of the United States Attorneys fired a few months later in the Pearl Harbor Day massacre. In case you have forgotten, on December 7 of 2006, a slate of U.S. Attorneys who either pursued charges against Republicans (Carol Lam in California prosecuted Duke Cunningham and was fired) or who, like Iglesias, refused to use the power of their office to influence lections to favor Republicans, were fired.

In Iglesias case, the trumped up reason for his termination was “time spent away from the office.” The 45 days per year he was gone, was Navy Reserves duty, and the Department of Justice, his very employer, is the government entity charged with prosecuting employers who violate the rights of reservists when that service is used to the detriment of the reservist in employment matters.

When Domenici retained Lee Blalock, a friend of mine, who happens to be an attorney, said that Lee Blalock is not who you hire if you are afraid of losing a Senate seat. Lee Blalock is who you hire if you have been engaging in criminal behavior and you want to keep your ass out of the slammer.

About six weeks after it was made public that Domenici had lawyered up, the Senate Ethics Committee engaged a rare parliamentary move that turned up the heat on Domenici and indicated that the scope of the investigation was widening from the mere propriety of the phone call in question.

The possibility that Domenici violated Senate ethics rules, and perhaps engaged in criminal conduct has not been laid to rest, all investigations are ongoing. It is at least possible that revelations will be brought to light about the Senators involvement in the U.S. Attorney scandal when Bush’s pick for Attorney General comes up for confirmation later in the month.

Steve Benen has more.

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Abu G Went Up the Hill to Carry Bushie's Water

Alberto went back up the Hill today and once more faced a stern and scowling Senate Judiciary Committee. By the time it was all said and done, Senator Leahy was hinting at perjury charges and Senator Specter raised the specter of a special prosecutor.

Noting aWol’s unprecedented invocation of executive privilege, Specter observed that “the president’s word stands and the constitutional authority and responsibility for congressional oversight is gone.” He went on to voice that one of the alternatives he has been kicking around is the appointment of a special prosecutor. “The attorney general has the authority to appoint a special prosecutor,” said Specter. “You’re recused, but somebody else could do it. You’re recused because you know all of the principals. You have a conflict of interest. But doesn’t the president have an identical conflict of interest?”

The AG did not disappoint those of us who have come to expect the very worst from his pathetic, pathological appearances.

He disputed charges that morale in the Justice Department has plummeted under his leadership, saying that morale can best be measured by "output." The department's output in the last six months has been "outstanding," he asserted.

"I've decided to stay and fix the problems," he said in response to a question.

Senator Leahy was decidedly not buying what Gonzo was selling:

But Gonzales came under withering criticism from the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), and from its top Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.)

"The attorney general has lost the confidence of the Congress and the American people," Leahy said. He said the administration "has squandered our trust" and told Gonzales bluntly, "I don't trust you."

And Senator Specter seemed to blast the hapless Gonzo with both barrels:

Specter said there was "evidence of low morale" at the Justice Department and blasted what he described as Gonzales's lack of "personal credibility." He called the department "dysfunctional." Specter raised the prospect of calling for a special prosecutor to press a potential contempt-of-Congress citation over the White House's refusal to provide certain documents and sworn testimony regarding the firing of nine federal prosecutors last year. He denounced the Bush administration's stand that it would prohibit the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia from pursuing a contempt citation.

"Now if that forecloses a determination of whether executive privilege has been properly imposed, then the president in that manner can stymie congressional oversight by simply saying there is executive privilege," Specter said. That would spell the end of congressional oversight and take the controversy "to a really incredible level," he said.

"Now we've been exploring some alternatives," Specter said, noting that "the attorney general has the authority to appoint a special prosecutor." He told Gonzales, "You're recused, but somebody else could do it."

Specter added, "We also have the alternative of convening the Senate and having a contempt citation and trying it in the Senate."

Gonzo’s pledge to stay on and roll up his sleeves and get to work setting the department back right is simply staggering. WTF???

There is no confidence in the Attorney General from the rank-and-file in the Justice Department. They are despondent and have zero confidence in their compromised, beleaguered “leader.”

Senior staff has resigned in unprecedented numbers. Candidates refuse employment with the department. At least half of the top jobs at Main Justice are unfilled and others are staffed with temps.

Legislative priorities are not being addressed, including revisions to the intelligence laws and anti-crime proposals. "It takes away from normal work," one recently departed Justice official said about the persistent controversy over Gonzales's role in the firings and the use of improper political considerations in hiring career employees. "It obviously has a serious impact," said the former official, who would discuss the department's internal workings only if not identified.

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have called on Gonzales to resign, but he has steadfastly refused, taking the slings and arrows of public and congressional outrage for his boss. He staunchly, stubbornly hangs on, knowing that his boss will never fire the firewall that stands between him and criminal investigations and prosecutions. The Senate has no confidence in him, and the vote indicates. No, it wasn’t sixty – but it wasn’t less than fifty, either. Remember that.

Let’s face it – without Gonzales, a competent attorney general would have to be installed. The Democratic-controlled Congress would not confirm a lackey like Gonzales. (Imagine Jack Danforth as AG…Oh, reverie…Not only would those Main Justice jobs get snapped up by well-qualified candidates, there would be resignations in the West Wing sufficient to stop the administration dead in its tracks.)

So make with the impeachment of this hapless, sad little man who feebly feigns a desire to do his job, now that it’s all come undone and he is exposed for what he is: a not-to-bright, ideologically driven, inept and compromised failure.

Let me finish with an installment of “What My Lawyer Said”

“This is precisely why I have been a raving lunatic for months … about the necessity of initiating an impeachment investigation, even if it is only as to Gonzales to start. Running out the clock in order to protect our majorities, gain some seats and install a Democratic administration does not cut it. That is akin to doing some public service announcements and hoping crime disappears in your community. The facts and extent of harm must be fleshed out in a formal investigation, the public must be allowed to understand the full nature and extent of what has occurred, and those responsible must be held to account. If not, the ugly beast continues to raise it’s ugly head with impunity in the future.”

Well said, Counselor.

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