I Am Afraid Monica's Freudian Slip Is Showing or How Rachel Paulose Can't Catch A Break.

God I love this job. I have been following the really brain dead public relations campaign to rehabilitate the fading career of Rachel Poulose. Rachel is a young Republican with a wonderful resume. She seems to have some problem with the "little people." Shortly after she took the job of US Attorney in Minneapolis, four of her top aides got so fed up with her imperious ways they took demotions rather than spend time working with her directly. Instead of learning the obvious life lessons from that early debacle, she apparently has decided to fight back. As near as I can tell she has surrounded herself with a truly clueless PR posse that has done an absolutely crappy job. For example, last monday she tried to reintroduce herself just days before Monica Goodling was going to testify. That reintroduction didn't go very well. Neither did Katherine Kersten's followup whine.

Luckily for Rachel, Monica didn't have a lot to say about her, and it was mostly good. Monica did make some unfortunate comments about Rachel's predecessor, Tom Heffelfinger. Heffelfinger was the very model of a loyal Republican US Attorney right up to last week. All through the US Attorney scandal, even after he was found to be on the list of attorneys to be fired, he insisted that his resignation was entirely voluntary.

As has been typical of the Gonzales Justice Department, Monica found a way to really anger the former US Attorney. She criticized his professional work. As will be revealed below, the Clucking Stool thinks she might have suffered what we used to call a Freudian slip.

In response to a question from Representative Keith Ellison, Monica said, "There were some concerns that he (Heffelfinger) spent an extraordinary amount of time as the leader of the Native American subcommittee of the AGAC (Attorney General's Advisory Committee)."

Heffelfinger replied by telling KARE11 News he was "extraordinarily outraged" to hear his work criticized. Heffelfinger was proud of his work with Native Americans. He told the AP, again quoting KARE11,

"I did spent a lot of time on it," Heffelfinger said of the American Indian issue. "That's what I was instructed to do" by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. Given the higher rates of violence suffered by American Indians, Heffelfinger said, the time was warranted, but it didn't take away from other priorities.

"I had to work hard, but I was comfortable with the mix of my local responsibilities and my Native American responsibilities," said Heffelfinger, who oversaw his office's investigation into the 2005 shooting that claimed 10 lives on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in far northern Minnesota.

Throughout the US Attorney scandal there is a common theme, a theme most of the loyal Bushies like Sampson, Goodling and their boss have yet to figure out--you just don't tell a proud professional that the work he is proudest of is crap, not unless you really want to have your hat handed to you.

This morning the LA Times carried a story by Tom Hamburger, Times Staff Writer, and former Minnesota native, tying Heffelfinger's good work on behalf of Native Americans to another overarching theme of the Gonzales justice department--the ongoing Republican campaign to suppress the minority vote. Yep, Heffelfinger refused to take part in a campaign to suppress the Native American vote, a campaign that involves two of our old favorites, Brad Schlozman and Hans von Spakovsky.

As you will recall Von Spakovsky and Schlozman are voting suppression specialists linked to Republican voter suppression campaigns in Missouri and Georgia. Since most poor people of color are Democrats, from the point of view of Brad and Hans suppressing the vote of poor people of color is a good thing.

The basic Republican voter suppression plan, as advanced in Missouri and Georgia, is for local Republicans to plant the frightening image in the minds of the local media and the general public of thousands of poor black people showing up at the polls to vote Democratic dozens of times.

For a lot of technical reasons the kind of "voter fraud" that concerns Republicans is virtually non-existent. That doesn't stop the patented Republican voter suppression campaign. The Republican solution to the terrible, but non-existant, problem of "voter fraud" is to require each voter to present a special and expensive voter ID card at the polling place on election day. Republican legislatures eagerly enact such laws. Members of the local media write puff pieces singing the praises of Republicans who have solved a truly frightening problem.

Since poor people can't afford to pay a lot for their voter or state ID, or they might not realize they need one until the last minute, voter suppression of the poor Democratic minority is almost a sure thing.

Ordinarily, the United States Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division is all over such state statutes. After all poll taxes and the like are illegal under Federal law, and have been since Jim Crow days. Enter Schlozman and Von Spakovsky. Their job was to overrule or otherwise defang the career professionals in the civil rights division. Theirs was the most successful part of the Republican voter suppression campaign in the last couple of elections. In both, the Civil Rights Division, now largely manned by loyal Bushies, was essentially neutered. Fortunately, opponents didn't need DoJ help to convince the courts that the Missouri and Georgia laws were illegal.

There are 32,000 Native Americans living in the Saint Paul area alone. The ID they use in their daily lives is the ID card issued by their tribe. It is widely thought that a lot of those Native Americans vote for Democrats.

According to LA Times:

Citing requirements in a new state election law, Republican Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer directed that tribal ID cards could not be used for voter identification by Native Americans living off reservations. Heffelfinger and his staff feared that the ruling could result in discrimination against Indian voters. Many do not have driver's licenses or forms of identification other than the tribes' photo IDs.

Heffelfinger had one of his staff e-mail the Civil Rights Division. It was made clear that Heffelfinger was very concerned about Kiffmeyer's directive and believed something needed to be done. The Times article continues

About three months after Heffelfinger's office raised the issue of tribal ID cards and nonreservation Indians in an October 2004 memo, his name appeared on a list of U.S. attorneys singled out for possible firing.

"I have come to the conclusion that his expressed concern for Indian voting rights is at least part of the reason that Tom Heffelfinger was placed on the list to be fired," said Joseph D. Rich, former head of the voting section of the Justice Department's civil rights division. Rich, who retired in 2005 after 37 years as a career department lawyer — 24 of them in Republican administrations — was closely involved in the Minnesota ID issue

Rich is the lawyer who received the e-mails from a member of Heffelfinger's staff. Rich started working the case. According to Rich Schlozman and Von Spakovsky promptly placed impossible conditions on the conduct of the investigation effectively squelching it.

According to the Star Tribune, one of Rachel Paulose's first acts after appointment was "to remove Lewis, who had written the 2004 e-mails to Washington expressing concern about American Indian voting rights." I wonder if that's when her management problems began?

UPDATE: I just remembered Hans Von Spakosky has a confirmation hearing scheduled for June 13. With this story breaking right now, maybe he is the guy who can't catch a break?

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The Odd Rehabilitiation of Rachel Paulose

One of the pleasures of this job is reading offbeat stories about "important" people far, far away. Following their ups and downs. It's just sort of fun checking in to see how old friends are doing.

Rachel Paulose is someone I have been following. You remember Rachel. She is the very talented, but very young and very political U.S Attorney in Minneapolis. Upon ascendancy to her position she promptly pissed off her professional staff and had to deal with the voluntary demotions of her four top assistants. Most people would have thought that after that mess her best course would be to keep her head down, do her job, and above all show some appropriate humility.

I guess when you are born to the purple, humility is considered inappropriate. Apparently she has elected to strike back with a public relations campaign. As a result she continues to find herself in the middle of a twin cities media storm.

Proud of her rapid rise through the political ranks, when appointed she staged an elaborate ceremony to crown herself the new US Attorney in Minneapolis. She didn't even occur to her to invite the person she replaced. She might have asked about protocol but that would have meant talking to the little people.

In short order both the coronation and her imperious approach to her job angered key career professionals. Her four top people demoted themselves rather than work with her. Her office is easily the Department of Justice's poster child for management problems.

At about the same time some pinhead at main justice decided to claim that management and or performance problems led to the firing of the famous Gonzales 8. Only one of those US Attorneys had any management problems to speak of. Certainly none of them found him or herself at the heart of anything like Paulose's self-inflicted problems.

Apparently because they felt they needed to do something to help with the larger US Attorney firing scandal, main justice didn't fire Paulose out of hand. Instead they sent one of their people to smooth things over. As part of that smoothing the 4 self-demoted promised not to say anything in public about Paulose and her management problems.

Within weeks a couple of articles appeared bad mouthing the 4 self-demoted officials. Although they referred to unnamed sources, Rachel's fingerprints were visible. The four career professionals were jealous. They were picking on a poor, poor, but brilliant "woman of color," a woman with a future they could not imagine. The four demoted employees complained that Rachel had betrayed them. Not a smart move for somebody wanting achieve success as US Attorney. Rachel's march to the US Supreme Court has been damaged, probably irreparably.

It's all about Rachel, after all, so last week self-confessed conservative columnist Katherine Kersten filed a puff piece called The Real Rachel Paulose which essentially reviewed her admittedly fine resume. "So why are the critics piling on Paulose today?" Kersten opines "Two reasons.

She's young, female, a "person of color" and an immigrant. (Her grandfather came here from India with $7 in his pocket in the 1960s, she has said, and the rest of the family followed.) If she were a political liberal -- as such people are expected to be -- she would be the toast of the town. But she's not. In some folks' view, such renegades must be run out of the public arena quickly before other minority folks get similar uppity, independent ideas.

Second, she's an evangelical Christian. "This image of her as a kind of Jesus freak is just bizarre," says Kendall. "I've read things [about this] I find hard to believe. The descriptions of her aggressive religiosity just couldn't be farther from the person I knew."

Somehow Kersten overlooked Paulose's imperious management style and the rather ugly problems they have fostered in the day to day operation of her office. Perhaps as important Kersten overlooked the highly political process that led to Paulose's appointment. That oversight was not missed by the blog Norwegiantly.

The other day Paulose's office brought charges against a bunch of folks involved in a prostitution ring. I guess Paulose, or her public relations people, thought it would be the perfect story to reintroduce her. Nothing heavy. Nothing self-important. Just Rachel doing her job.

Apparently Paulose is surrounded by idiots. On Monday, at the height of the swirl about Rachel's friend Monica Goodling's coming testimony, Paulose decided to have a presser. Not smart. After all Goodling is at the heart of the red hot US Attorney scandal and both she and Paulose admit they are friends, but they claim they became friends only after Monica decided Paulose was fab for the job of US Attorney. Somebody in Paulose's camp must have realized a presser might drift from the prostitution story. Never fear, as Brian Lambert reports

In what may have been a first for a Minnesota public official soliciting media attendance at a press conference in a public building, US Attorney Rachel Paulose's staff announced prior to the start of her Monday press conference that Ms. Paulose would NOT be taking questions off the topic of her indictment of 25 people in a prostitution ring.

Any bets as to the success of that announcement? Apparently it was like waiving a red flag in front of a bull. Lambert continues.

Obviously Paulose, stepping out of her double secret probationary sanctum for the first time since it was confirmed that yes indeed her predecessor, Tom Heffelfinger, was on a list of US Attorneys considered for firing, and only two days before her friend, the equally fresh-faced and unworldly Monica Goodling, was scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee didn't want her photo op ruined. She collared some pimps and she was orchestrating credit for herself. Control was being exerted to prevent some no doubt Democrat-voting media twit from jostling her tiara with a biased question about, you know, how in the hell did she get her job?

And if it weren't for KARE-11's Scott Goldberg, followed by MPR's Elizabeth Stawicki and KSTP's Dana Benson, she might have pulled it off.

A controversy has developed involving Rachel's supporter Scott Johnson of Powerline and Kare11's Scott Goldman. Apparently Johnson is offended that Goldman, Stawicki and Benson went off the "ground rules" to ask Paulose questions about the impending Monica Goodling testimony. Goldman responded to Johnson's complaint by pointing out

In our industry, ground rules are conditions agreed upon by both parties before an interview takes place. The Paulose press conference didn’t begin with an agreement. It began with a decree.

And this is something I wanted to write about even before it appeared in the blog, because the press conference began so unusually:

Immediately before Paulose walked up to the podium, an aide announced that Paulose only would answer questions about the prostitution investigation.

That’s not a ground rule. That’s a joke.

A public official, in a public building, at a public meeting, can not tell reporters they are not allowed to ask questions about unpopular topics. That would be like Tony Snow announcing President Bush won’t be taking any questions on Iraq. Come on.

Let’s remember the backdrop:

1. This was the very first press conference Paulose held after three of the top lawyers in her office resigned their management positions and called her management style into question.

2. This was the very first press conference Paulose held after the news broke that the name of her predecessor, Tom Heffelfinger, had surfaced on a Justice Department “hit list.”

3. This was the very first opportunity we had to ask Minnesota’s new U.S. attorney about the scandal surrounding her boss, Alberto Gonzales.

4. This press conference happened to be taking place two days before Monica Goodling, the White House aide who played a role in hiring Paulose, was scheduled to testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee.

Knowing all of that, why on earth wouldn’t we ask Rachel Paulose about the elephant in the room?

In fairness the reporters did wade through the prostitution ring story for 27 minutes before they asked about the elephant. It is nice to know that the 4th estate is alive and well in Minneapolis.

It's pretty obvious that Paulose needs a new public relations team.

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