Something we knew all along...

Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson broke the law when they played politics in the hiring of career Justice Department attorneys You remember Tanya Harding Monica Goodling, the wingnut lawschool graduate who only hired staunch republicans, dedicated movement conservatives and wingnut religious freaks for career positions during her term as White House liason at the Justice Department.

Today's report singles out Goodling specifically for violating federal law and Justice Department policy by discriminating against job applicants who weren't good republicans and loyal bushies. While it doesn't suggest the two will face criminal charges, investigators did suggest that Goodling will at least lose her license to practice law - so there goes her hopes for a partnership with the whack-job Phelps daughter.


The hapless former AG, Alberto Gonzales, was found to be largely unaware of the illegal political litmus test two of his most trusted aides were applying when it came to hiring was largely unaware of the hiring decisions by two of his most trusted aides. Decisions made by those two aides weeded out Democrats and anyone perceived to be the least bit liberal. Goodling also rejected at least one lesbian job applicant.

Michael Mukasey, the man who replaced Gonzalez when he finally stepped down after a surreally stubborn summer of insisting he wouldn't go, made the obligatory remarks about being appalled, "I have said many times, both to members of the public and to department employees, it is neither permissible nor acceptable to consider political affiliations in the hiring of career department employees, and I have acted, and will continue to act, to ensure that my words are translated into reality so that the conduct described in this report does not occur again at the department."

Okay. But remember that I'm from Missouri. Don't tell me. Show me. Review every fucking one of the hires that these two placed in jobs by these clowns and determine if they are really suitable to the position. Applying and passing a political litmus test ought to imply a quid pro quo and that ought to reduce or eliminate the job protections enjoyed by most federal employees.

This is serious business. The Department of Justice is the department that can least stand to be politicized. Every person who finds him- or herself before the bar of justice should have confidence that they will receive a fair trial, and that their politics won't enter into it. It is antithetical to Justice that they destroyed that confidence when they turned Justice into "Just Us."

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Where’s the House Judiciary committee staff?

Given the total flop that House Judiciary engaged in with the foot-rubbing ”grilling” of Monica Goodling, it’s a very relevant question.

Where’s the committee majority staff on this? Remember, that’s how people like Bobby Kennedy and Fred Thompson got their names ... committee staff asking actual, or seemingly so, hard-hitting questions on major investigations.

Instead, as Dahlia Lithwick points out, we got this:

It’s not just that Goodling comes across as better, smarter, and more honest than Gonzales, Sampson, and McNulty put together, although she does. It’s that the committee, in expecting to question the Great Exploding Idiot Barbie today, is completely underprepared and overmatched.

Chalk up another one to the soft bigotry of low expectations.

Or the soft stupidity of a House Democratic party that is still stuck in the pre-BushCo, or even pre-Gingrich-DeLay, era of governance.

Cross-posted at SocraticGadfly.

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Who was being wiretapped, and why?

Call me paranoid – but if you do, remember that you can be paranoid and right at the same time. I am starting to believe that the members of The Party have used government departments and agencies to disenfranchise the other political party.

According to MSNBC, Paul M^cNulty was not the only resignation announced Monday.

Lanny Davis has resigned from the Department of Justice Privacy and Civil Liberties Board after White House attorneys last month applied pressure to alter reports and conceal FBI abuses against American citizens because they feared information in the reports would widen the scope of the investigations into the corrupt, unjust Justice department.

At the same time, Davis, a former Clinton White House official who had been named by President Bush to serve on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board, sent a letter to the White House and his fellow board members protesting the panel’s lack of independence. In recent months, Davis has had numerous clashes with fellow board members and White House officials over what he saw as administration attempts to control the panel’s agenda and edit its public statements, according to board members who asked not to be identified talking about internal matters. He also cited in his letters criticisms by the former co-chairs of the September 11 commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, that the board had interpreted its mandate too narrowly and was refusing to investigate issues such as the treatment of detainees in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere around the world.

Davis’s frustration reached a peak last month when White House lawyers engaged in what he described in his letter as “substantial” edits of the board’s annual report to Congress. Davis charged that the White House sought to remove an extensive discussion of recent findings by the Justice Department’s inspector general of FBI abuses in the uses of so-called “national security letters” to obtain personal data on U.S. citizens without a court order. He also charged that the White House counsel’s office wanted to strike language stating that the panel planned to investigate complaints from civil liberties groups that the Justice Department had improperly used a “material witness statute” to lock up terror suspects for lengthy periods of time without charging them with any crimes. (emphasis added)

When will someone connect the dots?

Monica Goodling was an opposition research specialist for the 2000 presidential campaign. Lets repeat that, a little louder this time… Monica Goodling was an opposition research specialist for the 2000 presidential campaign. She was trained by Barbara Comstock. Barbara Comstock from Watergate. Barbara Comstock who worked for the certifiable Dan Burton. The whack-a-doo who once executed a watermelon to “prove” Vince Foster was murdered. (You can’t make this stuff up.)

They put a Comstock protégé who was obsessed with political affiliation to the possible point of pathology in the Department of Justice and she oversaw a department that commenced with signing off on every request presented by the FBI for their specious National Security Letters. I want every single one of those National Security Letters reviewed by both Judiciary committees.

I’ve asked before, and I’ll ask again…Why aren’t we in the streets with pitchforks and torches over this stuff?

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Mr. Comey Returns to Washington

A former deputy attorney general lavished praise yesterday on most of the eight U.S. attorneys who were fired after he left the job, testifying that only one of them had serious performance problems.

James B. Comey, former deputy attorney general and second in command at the Justice Department from 2003 until August 2005, appeared before a House Judiciary subcommittee today. NPR described his testimony as “sliding a knife between the Attorney General’s ribs, and slowly twisting.”

Comey was a highly regarded prosecutor and now is chief council for Lockheed Martin. Never in his testimony did he so much as raise his voice. He didn’t need to. He came to tell the truth, apparently, and it looks like that is exactly what he did. His testimony was widely seen as undermining the Attorney Generals claims that nothing unusual occurred, the prosecutors had been fired for performance problems. His testimony also underscored the degree to which the firings, which originated in the White House, were handled outside the normal channels at main Justice.

In his testimony, he averred that although he was the direct supervisor in charge of all U.S. Attorneys, he was never informed about the planned purge of U.S. Attorneys that began in early 2005.

"My experience with the U.S. attorneys just listed was very positive," Comey said, referring to six of the former prosecutors who testified in Congress in March. He added that the reasons given for their firings "have not been consistent with my experience" and that "I had very positive encounters with these folks."

I guess “positive encounters” is apt – if not understated…

He described Paul K. Charlton of Arizona as "one of the best," said he had a "very positive view" of David C. Iglesias of New Mexico, and called Daniel G. Bogden of Las Vegas "straight as a Nevada highway and a fired-up guy." Of John McKay of Seattle, Comey said: "I was inspired by him."

Perhaps most damaging to the Justice Department was Comey's description of Carol C. Lam of San Diego as "a fine U.S. attorney." He acknowledged that he was concerned about Lam's record on firearms cases but said he had discussed the issue with her and did not see it as a firing offense.

Comey said that while he was deputy attorney general he did not have much interaction with fired prosecutor Bud Cummins of Little Rock. But he called Cummins a "good man" in a recent e-mail exchange released yesterday, adding that he "will not sit by and watch good people smeared."

Comey’s appearance followed by one day the revelation that the Justice Department has launched an investigation into former Gonzales aide aide , Monica Goodling to determine if she applied an illegal political test when considering applicants for Justice Department jobs.

Goodling has resigned her position and refused to testify before congress (although I seriously doubt that tack works out so very well for her...)

Comey was visibly uneasy at the prospect of a political litmus test being applied to the hiring process of attorneys working for the Justice Department “very troubling.” He went on…"I don't know how you would put that genie back in the bottle, if people started to believe we were hiring our AUSAs for political reasons.”

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Immunity for Goodling?

Could be. The House Judiciary Committee is considering it, and might be able to get the requisite 2/3 of the congress persons who hold seats on the committee to agree. It would mean that four Republicans would have to vote with the Democrats who control the Congress (and therefore the committees). Given the lack of support for the Attorney General, it is not unthinkable that four would stand up and defy the White House. (If your congressperson is on the committee, avail yourself of the contact information we provide in the sidebar and drop him or her a line.)

They know, and so does the White House that in 2008 we are selecting a different president no matter what. But every single congressperson is up for re-election every two years. They virtually never stop running for office. And for the first time in any of their careers Americans suddenly seem to be paying attention to absolutely everything. In this climate of heightened awareness among the electorate, the Republicans on the committee might be a bit reluctant to be seen as carrying water for this feckless president and his mendacious minions.

Americans are more than a little bit put off about the fact that an innocent woman spent four months in prison for doing her job in a Democratic administration. (We like to think of political prisoners as a big part of the reason we engaged in that 50-year ideological struggle with the USSR. Remember? I for one didn’t show up for duty during the Cold War just to pave the way for a worse brand of authoritarianism to take over at home. Just sayin.’)

Monica Goodling threw a change-up that had the White House swinging wildly when she announced preemptively that she would be “taking the Fifth” when testifying before Congress (she at one point indicated she wouldn’t even appear. That contemptuous talk was stifled quickly).

Conyers cited Goodling's dual role as Gonzales's aide and the Justice Department's liaison to the White House for the unusual immunity offer, saying she could "clear up the many inconsistencies and gaps surrounding this matter."

"Ms. Goodling clearly has much to contribute to the committee's understanding of the surrounding circumstances," Conyers said.

If the Committee grants immunity to Goodling, the only way the Justice Department could mount any objections would be if it could show objectively that an ongoing criminal investigation would be jeopardized by the arrangement. The Purge has sparked no criminal probes, but the department's inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility are exercising caution and conducting reviews to determine if any policies were violated.

Immunity would compel Goodling to answer questions in exchange for the promise that she would not face criminal prosecution based on evidence obtained by her testimony. (The Fifth guarantees a protection against self-incrimination).

The White House is anxious about any testimony she might offer – she was the liaison between Justice and Karl Rove. They do not want her to testimony under oath, and have been quite insistent about it. That they are so eager to keep her quiet is reason enough to grant her immunity and compel her testimony. And if she still balks, let her sit in a cell on contempt charges for a couple of days. I have a feeling a few days shock time would loosen her tongue right up.

[Cross posted to Blue Girl, Red State]

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