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 From Fired U.S. Attorneys to Sarah PalinPosted on Sep 30, 2008With Wall Street’s fate hanging in the balance, and with Sarah Palin’s incoherence sparking interest in Thursday’s vice presidential debate, it was easy to overlook another major story Monday that got less attention than it deserved. The Justice Department released a nearly 400-page report with this jaw-dropping bottom line: “Our investigation found significant evidence that political partisan considerations were an important factor in the removal of several ... U.S. attorneys.” Remember the controversy over the sudden dismissals of nine U.S. attorneys? Remember the allegation that the Bush administration had sullied the long-held principle that justice should be administered in an impartial, nonpartisan way? Remember the questions about what then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales knew and when he knew it? Remember Kyle Sampson, the Gonzales aide who played a key role in the firings? Remember Monica Goodling, the White House liaison who went so far as to ask prospective Justice appointees to wax eloquent about why they wanted to “serve” George W. Bush? The Justice Department conducted as thorough an investigation as it could, and concluded that there was evidence of White House political meddling in “at least three of the removals.” The joint probe by the department’s Office of Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility recommended further investigation to determine “whether the totality of the evidence demonstrates that any criminal offense was committed.” The investigators reported being stonewalled by the White House, saying they were unable to look at all the evidence “because of the refusal by certain key witnesses to be interviewed by us, as well as by the White House’s decision not to provide internal White House documents to us.” In other words, as far as the team of investigators could determine from the limited evidence they were allowed to uncover, what we suspected and feared seems to have been true. The Bush administration seems to have removed at least three federal prosecutors—who are supposed to be evenhanded and apolitical in the way they do their jobs—for partisan political reasons. The report says “it appears” that Missouri U.S. attorney Todd Graves “was told to resign because of a political dispute among Missouri politicians, not because of an objective assessment of his performance.” Specifically the dispute was between Republican Sen. Christopher S. “Kit” Bond and his brother, a Republican congressman. Arkansas U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins “was not removed for any performance reasons,” the report says. “Rather, the evidence shows that the main reason for Cummins’ removal was to provide a position for former White House official Tim Griffin.” The most egregious case, according to the report, was that of New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias. The evidence showed that Iglesias was removed because of complaints from Republican Sen. Pete Domenici and other GOP officials and party activists who believed he was not being aggressive enough in pursuing certain voter fraud and public corruption cases—by happenstance, cases against Democrats. Gonzales and his deputies at Justice never looked into Iglesias’ handling of those cases, and in fact never even asked him about them. They just fired him. The investigators wanted to ask White House political czar Karl Rove, White House counsel Harriet Miers, Goodling, Domenici and Domenici’s chief of staff about any role they played in Iglesias’ dismissal. All refused to be interviewed. In releasing the report, Attorney General Michael Mukasey announced that he had ordered a new investigation to “pursue this case wherever the facts and the law require,” including possible criminal charges. By most accounts, Mukasey has taken pains to cleanse Justice of the partisan taint that Gonzales left behind. Whatever ultimately comes of this disgraceful episode, however, we already know enough to put it in context. The people who have been running our government for the past eight years have nothing but contempt for government. They believe only in politics and ideology, in that order. First, win elections by any means necessary. Second, once in a position to act in the public good, govern with the ideological conviction that government is either irrelevant or harmful to the public interest. You can draw a straight line between firing U.S. attorneys for political reasons and turning a blind eye to the ruinous excesses of Wall Street. What’s impartial justice against the possibility of gaining political advantage? Why shackle the hallowed free market with government oversight?
And, if you want to draw the line a little farther, who cares if the prospective vice president appears to know nothing about anything?
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Bush the Infallible
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Jump to Comments
By mackTN, October 2 at 4:10 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
bush et al should be arrested, charged with gross incompetence if not treason. the republicans desperate to hold onto the keys will do and say anything, including masquerade as reformers.
ford pardoned nixon. mccain would hide all evidence, thwart investigations that wwould bring bush down.
i fear the voting process. the touch screens with no paper trail. desperate times....
Report thisBy purplewolf, September 30 at 8:15 pm #
Purple Girl: Can we say drawn and quartered?
Purple Girl: Can you say drawn and quartered?
Report thisBy JimM, September 30 at 6:32 pm #
A good essay, sir. and I agree fully.
Bush and Cheney should be arrested and imprisoned, with no charges or time limit, for the ruination of our country.
What a couple of assholes, and what are they yet keeping secret from us,and what is yet to come.
Report thisBy BruSays, September 30 at 4:56 pm #
Dear Maryanne Jameson,
Happy Birthday Mom!
Love,
Silly Willy Jameson
P.S. There...I did it! I didn’t dig on that inept, ignorant, creationist!
Report thisBy Inherit The Wind, September 30 at 2:09 pm #
“Dear Mom:
Happy Birthday!
Did you hear that Sarah Palin believes dinosaurs and people lived together?
Did you hear that Sarah Palin can only name one Supreme Court case, and that’s Roe v. Wade, and didn’t even KNOW that Brown vs Board existed?
Did you hear that Sarah Palin has a tattoo in an intimate location?
Have a GREAT birthday!
Love,
ITW
*************************************
Maryanne Jameson, September 30 at 11:09 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
You silly willies can’t even write your mom a birthday card without scribbling a dig against Sarah Palin. Give it a rest.
*************************************
You know? You’re right!
(BTW, I don’t know if she has a tat in an intimate location but I’d bet $100 to $2 that she does...just a hunch...BTW, if it comes out she DOES have a tat, remember your old pal ITW called if first, right here!)
Report thisBy BruSays, September 30 at 12:22 pm #
The bigger story is not Wall Street’s crisis and its impact on Main Street.
The bigger story is not the nomination of an absolutely unqualified candidate for the Number Two spot.
The bigger story is not even the dismissals of the U.S. attorneys.
The Bigger Story is that We The People have allowed this to happen. We are witnessing the crumbling of our democracy. These stories about our economy, our VP candidate and the shenanigans surrounding the attorney dismissals are all symptoms of a much larger illness - a much larger sickness.
In my view we lost control of our democracy because we let it go. No one invaded us, there was no coup, there was no world war. We, through our complacency, ignorance and non-involvement, let it happen.
We The People did it to ourselves. We The People now have front row seats on the demise of a democracy.
Report thisBy Maryanne Jameson, September 30 at 11:09 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
You silly willies can’t even write your mom a birthday card without scribbling a dig against Sarah Palin. Give it a rest.
Report thisBy TheRealFish, September 30 at 10:41 am #
Eugene, it got my attention. What *really* had my attention is that this report was issued at all, and that Mr. USAG “I don’t know if waterboarding is torture” Mukasey had to have allowed it to be published.
Considering he’s the guy who would refuse to acknowledge that Mr. Bush the Lesser just passed gas if he and Mukasey were the only two people in a closed elevator, for him to allow such a report to come out… well I can only infer there must be something more than just “significant evidence.”
My well earned cynicism makes me believe he must have signed, sealed and delivered confessions accompanied by audio and/or video of the actual events. I have so little faith in the USAG and the whole Department of Neocon Justice, the evidence must pile so high that to deny its existence would make Mukasey himself culpable and liable to charges.
Or maybe I’m just hoping. But I doubt it. I can conceive of no other situation that would prompt the DoNJ and Mukasey in particular to actually meet-out justice against his ruler.
Report thisBy lawlessone, September 30 at 9:51 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
Or, Wish Bush Had Never Been Born
Bush has exhausted our military, abandoned not just international law but even common sense, authorized torture, emasculated our Constitution, perverted our bureaucracy, promoted stupidity, politicized and polarized everything, looted our treasury, declared war on the middle and lower class, driven jobs overseas, lied about almost everything, enraged our friends, underestimated and assisted our enemies, squandered our good will, diverted our attention from great dangers, abandoned science as well as diplomacy, made us a junky hooked us on oil, raped the environment, wrecked our health care, wasted our resources, hacked our electoral process, trivialized our honor and even our language, and continually acted ignorant, juvenile, vindictive, petty and criminal, not to mention embarrassing beyond belief at home and abroad. And now, he has maybe bankrupted our entire financial system putting us in mortal danger.
Is there anything this man has ever touched even before he became a politician that he has not made worse? He was a silly cheerleader in college, but he sure has never since given us anything to cheer about. In fact, if they remade “It’s a Wonderful Life” today and cast disgraced George Bush as George Bailey, they’d have to rename the movie and shorten it to ten minutes long, because in real life the world would have been a lot better off is George Bush had never been born.
We shouldn’t relax vigilance though even though he has only a few weeks left. He can still destroy a lot more in the weeks he has left in office.
[more irreverence at resistence-is-possible.blogspot.com]
Report thisBy pacer521, September 30 at 9:21 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
great post—keep it up
http://culturedecoded.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/analysi s-why-the-republicans-cant-replace-sarah-palin/
Report thisBy yellowbird2525, September 30 at 9:15 am #
our “lawmakers” have been lawbreakers catering only to the wealthy & conspiring to get all the wealth from all the people that they could do. Folks I have watched & listened to & seen the “local” state Gov & Congress & they even shake their heads that folks STILL believe their constitution or that their voice means anything at all. ****our nation was SET UP for all taxes re schools, roads, defense etc: ALL be paid for by profits from big business. Which are making literally above & beyond trillions & trillions & trillions of $; the books are “cooked”; they “always” lose billions of $ of equipment etc folks: they are on PAPER ONLY. THey have continually “pocketed” the $; their whole “selling” this to other countries is: do whatever you want to & NEVER BE PROSECUTED or BROUGHT TO LAW. Yep, that’s right folks; THIS is why we are busy running around to the “heads” of other countries (both dem & reps) to “sell” on democracy. Bribing the heads of states to let the giant Corps (who are exempt from ever being prosecuted) & if they are sued they have the Supreme Court to “limit” the liability or do away with sentence all together. This is NOT dysfunctional Gov it is DICTATORSHIP “disguiesed” & the people are programmed to THINK that they are free; and they have had “everything” when in reality they have been run as a large plantation for the wealth of the few. Sorry folks: every other country on earth knows the truth: it is TIME that YOU did.
Report thisBy Fahrenheit 451, September 30 at 7:04 am #
It’s taken a while, but I finally figured out why McCain picked Palin as a V.P. running mate. He knows he will die before he finishes his term: So, he wants (maybe “they” want) a malleable, naive, candidate “they” can mold into anything “they” want. Sort of a neo-con Stepford Wife! Oh, buyer beware this product!
Report thisBy Expat, September 30 at 6:55 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
I’m an expat now but in 2000 I worked hard to persuade people to vote against George Bush. I clearly remember advising voters that Bush would start wars (because that’s what weak personalities do) and crash the economy (inflated then by the so-called tech bubble—with nary a sign of a regulator in sight) and put people with conflicts of interest in all of the positions of trust in the government (because that is what his father did). After Bush named Cheney, it was obvious that there would be an element of cruelty in his administration as well (because Cheney was known for unequaled meanness while in government). It is horrifying to be proven right, but it shows that none of the suffering or death was necessary. All of the facts I relied on for my sadly too accurate predictions were in the New York Times and the Washington Post, often on the front page.
N.B. I don’t use “traitor” to describe the Bush administration because the Constitution (III.3) defines treason narrowly as consisting “only in levying war against [the US] or adhering to [its] enemies, giving them aid and comfort.” As usual, it is not foreigners but Americans who are the authors of our disasters. The fact is, Republicans see people like themselves as above the law and the rest of us as below the law; there is no respect for the law-abiding.
Report thisBy AT, September 30 at 6:31 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
So it all came down to this: after all the faking, fireworks and razzle dazzles by George walker Bush, it is the 85 billion dollars question: To bail out or not. The Democrats cowards showed their true faces, yes yes yes.
Report thisBy Purple Girl, September 30 at 5:28 am #
Then Round them all up in one Swift move!
it’s time to Turn the handbook Back On THEM.
first let’s Not Hesitate to Use the Justifiable Term TRAITOR when dealing with anyone associated with this Administration and the resulting national catastrophes. ‘War Crimes’ when we discuss Iraq, Torture.’Crimes Against humantiy’ when reviewing the last 1/2 century doctrine of Blood for Oil which All of humanity has suffered Under one way or another.
Let’s not mince Words about heresy either when indicting the ‘Relgious Right’ on their Crimes against God and Humanity. Let’s be straight Up- these Fanatical Extremeist are No Different then the Muslim ones,they are just as deadly and Deluded. These ‘Deceivers’ are Unable to EVEN Follow 10 Basic Rules! they Highjack Judgement and duties which are granted only to that Which can legitimately be referred to as ‘Almighty’! Excuse me, Who are You to Decide ‘End of Days’ is NOW?You are Claiming Rights that are Way above Your Pay Scale on that one!
But we must wait until No Options for Redemption or repreive is Possible- No Pardons, No commutations,No Clemancy, No Mercy.
If you hear Hoof beats think Horses...Our ‘Conquistadors’ are Coming up behind You!And All Four of Your Horsemen will Go Down- Oppressive/Dangerous Religious Ideologies, Greed and apathy of Industry, The appeasingCorrupt Gov’t and their LYING Town Criers!
Cave Adsum!
Report thisBy Marc Schlee, September 30 at 4:05 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
Where was The Decider six years ago, a year ago, a MONTH ago, when he could have turned this around?
Pursue the Bush administration beyond January 20 until they are brought to justice.
FREE AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY (DIRECT) DEMOCRACY
Report thisBy Wily Trax, September 30 at 3:15 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
This would get a lot more press if Katie Couric interviewed Alberto Gonzales.
http://www.wilytrax.com
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