Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Charles Schumer (D-NY) have called on the Senate to hold a no-confidence vote on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, hoping it will prompt Gonzales to resign. The White House quickly derided the vote, calling it “nothing more than a meaningless political act.”
And George Bush knows a thing or two about Meaningless Political Acts.
There has been much written and discussed of late on the roiling scandals permeating the US Department of Justice. Much of it, and rightfully so, is being driven by the Democratic left. Our own Corpus Juris has been both eloquent and dogged on these issues, and deserves our commendation and thanks. Although I have seen absolutely no evidence of this from CJ, or any other contributor here, there are many of our brothers and sisters out there among the political activists and blogosphere that are, unfortunately, viewing this set of issues as but another political battle to be played for maximum advantage against the Republicans. Such a view cannot, and must not, be our tact.
The cracking of the Justice Department scandals must be a goal of justice and the rule of law, not a political goal. Quite frankly, adherence to steadfast political goals, albeit it on the other side, is what got us to this point in the first place. The actions of the investigating Congressional committees should not be to advance political goals, they should be to advance the principle of justice irrespective of whether the benefit inures to the Democratic or Republican side. To act otherwise puts the result above the process; the foundation of American law, and indeed American democracy itself, is the primacy of a fair and impartial process not the guarantee of any particular result or goal.
There has been a long and slow degradation of the understanding of this fundamental premise by both the American public and their elected leaders. When either side decides that "political goals" are primary, that inherently places results above the process. I have practiced law in the governmental misconduct and criminal areas for twenty years, and the phenomenon I describe is quite evident in the halls of justice. A lot of the circumstances and problems we are focused on today are the festering mature result of the primordial decisions of one party, the Republicans, to serve "political goals" by declaring themselves the "law and order party" and spreading fear of isolated and ultimately inconsequential, yet publically hyped and discussed, results in criminal cases. If a particular criminal defendant went free because the police or prosecution had substantially violated fundamental Constitutional protections, they screamed and bellowed "Hide the women and children, those liberals have freed this heinous criminal on a technicality to roam your streets and rob, rape and murder again".
So it began with characterizing hideous and substantive Fourth Amendment violations of fundamental search and seizure law as "mere technicalities". Soon judges and prosecutors, usually being elected officials themselves, started shading their duties and principles under the law to find creative ways around Constitutional protections in order to avoid results that would be unpopular. Then the officials ran again for election proudly proclaiming how they had protected the "law and order for the citizens" by "clamping down on criminals" and "elimianting the criminal's use of technicalities". The more they talked the talk, the more they walked the walk.
The sad result over time is the situation we now find ourselves in where technicalities (read: the Constitution) be damned, the government and justice system is to be used as just another partisan tool. The Attorney General of the United States dismissively brands the Genevea Conventions as "quaint" and inconsequential. The President of the United States belligerently ignores the Constitution screaming that "it's just a damn piece of paper". The Executive Branch acts, and thinks, like Article II of the Constitution (the one delineating and defining the Executive Branch) is the only portion that exists. This is what happens when political goals (the results) trump adherence to the principles of the system (the process). There is no way to excise politics completely because it is inherent in the process at hand; however, it must not be the guiding intent. If the fundamental process can be restored and borne out, our victory will flow therefrom automatically.
The gripe that has been bugging me for over 24 hours now is how in the hell did Monica Goodling get her job? Have you seen her background? McClatchy Newspapers reports:
"Goodling, 33, is a 1995 graduate Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., an institution that describes itself as "committed to embracing an evangelical spirit." She received her law degree at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va. Regent, founded by Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson, says its mission is "to produce Christian leaders who will make a difference, who will change the world."
She did not even graduate law school until mid to late 1999; what qualifications does she have? Is she a member of a state bar anywhere? If so, I can find no evidence of it. Does she have ANY prosecutorial experience; again, if so I can find no record. From what I have seen, this girl does not have the bonafides to be hired as a line level municipal prosecutor of petty offenses and small misdemeanors. How did she become Senior Counselor to the Attorney General of the United States and Liason to the White House/Executive Office? This is truly amazing. Heckuva Job Brownie was fucking overqualified compared to Ms. Goodling. How did this wet behind the ears theocrat get planted in a senior DOJ position? How many other Monica Goodlings have been wrongfully planted in critical positions? The Bushies have long loathed the separating wall between church and state; is this how they are breaking it down?
That was then:
The 18 1/2-Minute Gap -- Three days after the Watergate break-in, Nixon and Haldeman discussed the arrests. A tape made then contained a supicious 18 1/2-minute gap.
Shades of Rose Mary Woods? An 18 day gap?
I think a commenter in our document dump research thread may have been the first to notice that the emails released by the Justice Department seem to have a gap between November 15th and December 4th of last year.
(Our commenter saw it late on the evening of the dump itself -- see the comment date-stamped March 20, 2007 02:19 AM in the research thread)
The firing calls went out on December 7th. But the original plan was to start placing the calls on November 15th. So those eighteen days are pretty key ones.
The following is a press release from the Office of Congresswoman Linda T. Sánchez
Washington - Chairwoman Linda Sánchez today announced that the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law (CAL) will meet tomorrow to vote on issuing subpoenas for certain former U.S. Attorneys who were recently fired by the Bush Administration.
If approved by the subcommittee, the subpoenas - which would be the first issued by the 110th Congress - would require Carol Lam, David Iglesias, H.E. Cummins, III, and John McKay to appear before a CAL Subcommittee hearing next week.
"In order to get the full picture of why these U.S. Attorneys were fired, we need to hear from the Justice Department and the U.S. Attorneys themselves," said Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers. "We look forward to their testimony on this issue."
"I called this meeting because we pledged to do everything we can to get to the truth of what could be brazen abuse of power by the Bush Administration," said CAL Chairwoman Sánchez.
The hearing, which is scheduled for Tuesday, March 6, will consider a bill by Congressman Howard Berman that would reverse a new provision in the USA PATRIOT Act allowing the Attorney General to indefinitely appoint federal prosecutors through the end of the Bush Administration without Senate confirmation.
**The vote to issue subpoenas is scheduled for Thursday, March 1, at 4:00 pm in the Judiciary Committee Hearing Room (2141 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC).
"I would never, ever make a change in the United States attorney position for political reasons," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said in Senate testimony in early January. As the AG is learning if the other party wins the election, you might as well be truthful when under oath. Strange thing about the truth, it seems to dribble out.
According to an article in Salon that is exactly what they did.
In a Feb. 6 hearing, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty told lawmakers, "When I hear you talk about the politicizing of the Department of Justice, it's like a knife in my heart."Knife meet heart.
at least three of the eight fired attorneys were told by a superior they were being forced to resign to make jobs available for other Bush appointees, according to a former senior Justice Department official knowledgeable about their cases. That stands in contradiction to administration claims that the firings were related either to job performance or policy differences. A fourth U.S. attorney was told by a top Justice Department official that the dismissal in that attorney's case was not necessarily related to job performance. Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney David Iglesias in New Mexico -- who officially steps down from his post on Wednesday, and who says he was never told by superiors about any problems with his work -- plans to go public with documentation of the achievements of his office.
"I never received any indication at all of a problem" regarding performance or policy differences, Iglesias told Salon on Monday. "That only leaves a third option: politics."
The U.S. attorney from New Mexico who was recently fired by the Bush administration said Wednesday that he believes he was forced out because he refused to rush an indictment in an ongoing probe of local Democrats a month before November's Congressional elections.
David Iglesias said two members of Congress separately called in mid October to inquire about the timing of an ongoing probe of a kickback scheme and appeared eager for an indictment to be issued on the eve of the elections in order to benefit the Republicans. He refused to name the members of Congress because he said he feared retaliation.
Two months later, on Dec. 7, Iglesias became one of six U.S. attorneys ordered to step down for what administration officials have termed "performance-related issues." Two other U.S. attorneys also have been asked to resign.
Iglesias, who received a positive performance review before he was fired, said he suspected he was forced out because of his refusal to be pressured to hand down an indictment in the ongoing probe.
"I believe that because I didn't play ball, so to speak, I was asked to resign," said Iglesias, who officially stepped down Wednesday.
It is being reported in the New York Times that Harriet Meirs personally phoned an aide to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales suggesting the appointment of J. Timothy Griffin a political director for the Republican National Committee and a deputy to Karl Rove US Attorney for Arkansas.
I guess President Bush just wanted to give Mr. Griffin a chance to advance his career. Of course he could have done that by giving him a Washington job in the Justice Department. Mr. Griffin wouldn't have had to sell his Washington house and move to Little Rock.
Hillary Clinton is running for President. That Hillary spent several years in Arkansas couldn't have anything to do with the appointment?
In fairness reportedly Mr. Griffin had worked as a Federal Prosecutor and as a JAG officer at some point prior to becoming a Rovian henchman.
On the other hand the Arkansas Times has reported that not all the the folks in Arkansas are happy about the appointment.
“Quite frankly, within the legal community in Central Arkansas and even Eastern Arkansas, they felt Bud was being pushed out so Tim could be rewarded with this position he wanted,” said Michael Teague, a spokesman for U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor.
U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln said, “Clearly, the president and his administration are aware of the difficulty it would take to get Tim Griffin confirmed through the normal process, and therefore chose to circumvent it in order to name him as interim U.S. attorney. This decision denied the Senate the opportunity to carefully consider and evaluate Mr. Griffin’s qualifications and denied the American people the transparency the standard nomination process provides.”
The Arkansas Times reports that Mr. Griffin's political work includes "serving from 1995-96 as an associate independent counsel investigating Henry Cisneros, who was President Bill Clinton’s secretary of housing and urban development; senior investigative counsel to the Republican-controlled House Government Reform Committee’s 1997-99 inquiry into foreign contributions to the Democratic National Committee; deputy research director for the Republican National Committee from 1999-2000; legal adviser to the Bush/Cheney recount team in Florida following the 2000 election; special assistant to Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff from 2001-02; and research director and deputy communications director for the Republican National Committee from 2002-05, after which he joined the White House political affairs office."
The British Broadcasting Corporation has unearthed e-mail messages Griffin sent from the RNC in 2004 containing spreadsheet information on thousands of Florida voters. The spreadsheets were titled “caging,” which, according to the BBC, alludes to a voter suppression tactic.
Griffin's caging scheme was a particularly nasty suppression tactic aimed at black sericemembers. According to Greg Palast / Democracy Now! the RNC mailed voters letters in envelopes marked, “Do not forward”, to be returned to the sender. These letters were mailed to servicemen and women, some stationed overseas, to their US home addresses. The letters then returned to the Bush-Cheney campaign as "undeliverable." The party could then challenge the voters' registration and thereby prevent their absentee ballot being counted.
Palast reports that
One target list was comprised exclusively of voters registered at the Jacksonville, Florida, Naval Air Station. Jacksonville is third largest naval installation in the US, best known as home of the Blue Angels fighting squandron.
The BBC obtained several dozen confidential emails sent by the Republican's national Research Director and Deputy Communications chief, Tim Griffin to GOP Florida campaign chairman Brett Doster and other party leaders. Attached were spreadsheets marked, "Caging.xls." Each of these contained several hundred to a few thousand voters and their addresses.
A check of the demographics of the addresses on the "caging lists," as the GOP leaders called them indicated that most were in African-American majority zip codes.
