Gonzales must resign now. "Mistakes were made."

White House insiders: Gonzales hurt himself before panel
White House insiders: Gonzales hurt himself before panel

• Specter says Gonzales' "credibility has been impaired"
• Republican Sen. Coburn urges Gonzales to resign
• Gonzales: Alleging partisanship is an attack on career Justice Dept. employees

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- White House insiders tell CNN that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales hurt himself during testimony before a Senate committee Thursday on the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

The sources, involved in administration discussions about Gonzales, told White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux that two senior level White House aides who heard the testimony described Gonzales as "going down in flames," "not doing himself any favors," and "predictable."

"Everyone's putting their best public face on," one source said, "but everyone is discouraged. Everyone is disappointed." (Watch a recap of the testy hearing)

But these sources acknowledge that no one knows what the president will do. No one is looking for a replacement yet, sources said, and the White House is waiting to see how this plays out with the public and members of Congress over the next couple of days.

Another White House insider said it's up to the President to save him. (Strategy Session: Should Gonzales go?)

"He and Al have to work this out ..." he said. "There is no indication that Gonzales thinks he needs to leave."

During his testimony, Gonzales apologized for the manner in which the attorneys were fired, but added that, "nothing improper occurred."

The fired prosecutors "deserve better from me and the Department of Justice which they served for many years." (Watch Gonzales' opening statement)

In response to questioning by Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wisconsin, Gonzales said he thinks he can continue to be an effective leader of the Justice Department.

"The moment I believe I can no longer be effective, I will resign as attorney general," he said. (Watch Sen. Kohl ask Gonzales if he should resign)

Asked what he would have done differently, Gonzales said he would have prevented his then-chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, from allowing the dismissal process to take two years, and he would have arranged a face-to-face meeting with each lawyer, with time allotted for them to respond to concerns.

Publicly, White House Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino said Gonzales has the full backing of the president:

"President Bush was pleased with the Attorney General's testimony today. After hours of testimony in which he answered all of the senators' questions and provided thousands of pages of documents, he again showed that nothing improper occurred. He admitted the matter could have been handled much better, and he apologized for the disruption to the lives of the U.S. attorneys involved, as well as for the lack of clarity in his initial responses," Perino said.

The Justice Department said in a statement Gonzales "has taken steps to leave the Department in a stronger and better place from the lessons learned from this matter."

But sources involved in discussions with White House officials say,"People are a bit shocked. He didn't win over Democrats and he may have lost a few Republicans. No one privately is saying it's a homerun. No one is saying he did what he needed to do. There's faint praise like he didn't get killed. We understand he's on shaky ground."

GOP senators also critical of Gonzales
Leading Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee also were critical of Gonzales, including one who called for his resignation.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, said Gonzales should resign.

"The communication was atrocious. It was inconsistent -- it's generous to say that there was misstatements; it's a generous statement. And I believe you ought to suffer the consequences that these others have suffered," Coburn said, adding,"I believe the best way to put this behind us is your resignation." (Watch Coburn tell Gonzales he must "suffer the consequences")

Coburn is the first Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee to call for Gonzales' resignation.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, told reporters that Gonzales' "credibility has been impaired" and that the case has put career attorneys in a precarious position. (Watch Specter and Gonzales spar over preparation)

Specter said he would not recommend Gonzales resign because that decision was for the president and the attorney general.

Criticism of Gonzales also came from Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who is usually viewed as a supporter of the Bush administration.

"I believe you are a good and decent man," Cornyn told Gonzales. "But I have to tell you that the way this process has been handled is really deplorable."

One White House insider points to the comments by Republican senators as a troubling sign for Gonzales. The problem with the testimony, according the insider, was that "every senator except for Orrin Hatch was not helpful, even senator John Cornyn was frustrated. That's not good."

"His [Gonzales'] tactic was inexplicable. He keeps saying I know why I made the decision, but I don't know anything else," one source said.

Thursday's session was delayed for two days because of this week's shooting rampage at Virginia Tech.

CNN's Ted Barrett, Kevin Bohn and Suzanne Malveaux contributed to this report.
-----------------------------------------------

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/04/19/gonzales.testimony/index.html

Does this mean that Gonzo won't be confirmed for the Supreme Court?

I don't see it that way, advocate. There are a significant number of republicans in both senate and house whom I sincerely respect and consider deeply principled. Grapham and Specter are two. I often don't hold the same ideas or values but that's bound to be the case.

Dr Hunter Thompson arose from the grave to declare "Gonzo" is patent protected.

You mean copyrighted, you duff.

Hunter is Gonzo. The AG is Goonzales or Goonzo for short.

No, no. He is GoneZales.

Joe(or nearly gone)Nation

I just knew I was going to awaken this morning to a weekend announcement of resignation.

Guess I didn't get my wish.

Questions remain about who engineered the firings of U.S. at
The leadership of the Republican Party have once again put their party above the nation's interests. Leaders have said the reason they won't demand that Gonzales resign is to avoid the confirmation process for a new attorney general. They are trying to protect Bush, Cheney and Rove involvement in the attorney firings out of fear it would further damage the republicans in the 2008 election. ---BBB

Posted on Fri, Apr. 20, 2007
U.S. ATTORNEYS
Questions remain about who engineered the firings of U.S. attorneys
By Margaret Talev and Ron Hutcheson
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The Senate Judiciary Committee's grilling Thursday of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was rich in human drama but failed to resolve Congress' central questions.

After thousands of pages of documents and hours of testimony from Justice Department officials, it remains unknown who in the Bush administration conceived the plan to fire eight U.S. attorneys and why.

Gonzales' testimony Thursday left senators convinced he wasn't behind the plan or its execution and in fact knew far less than a department head should have about the details. Former and current members of Gonzales' staff who've been interviewed by congressional investigators also have said their roles were limited or nonexistent.

Absent another explanation, the signs point to the White House and, at least in some degree, to the president's political adviser, Karl Rove.

David Iglesias, the former New Mexico U.S. attorney and one of the eight fired last year, said investigating the White House's role is the logical next step - one that would follow existing clues about Rove's involvement.

"If I were Congress, I would say, `If the attorney general doesn't have answers, then who would?' There's enough evidence to indicate that Karl Rove was involved up to his eyeballs."

Iglesias said another clue that the White House may have been the driving force is the relative lack of Justice Department documentation for the firings in the 6,000 pages of documents turned over to Congress.

"If you want to justify getting rid of someone, you should have at least some paper trail," Iglesias said. "There's been a remarkable absence of that. I'm wondering if the paper trail is at the White House."

Even if Gonzales decides to step down - he says he won't despite widespread Republican disappointment with his performance - Democrats say they'll continue their probe into whether politics inappropriately influenced the firings.

"The arrow points more and more to the White House," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "The one thing I can assure you of: This is not over, far from it."

That's why some Republicans think Gonzales should stay on the job.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told Gonzales in a telephone call Friday that the worst was probably over for him and that stepping down wouldn't necessarily help the president.

In a statement he released later in the day, Cornyn said, "Democrats see an opportunity to score a lot of political points, so I don't necessarily believe that the attorney general's resignation would quell the Democrats' desire to continue with a partisan fishing expedition."

Charlie Black, a Republican consultant with ties to the White House, said of Democrats: "What they're after in this so-called U.S. attorneys investigation is a fishing expedition to try to see if Karl, or somebody else, fired people for political purposes. It would not slow them down if the attorney general left."

Black added: "They might decide, `This worked great. Let's go after some other Cabinet official.'"

Some Republicans, however, want to know more about Rove's role.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., immediate past chairman of the judiciary panel, said after Gonzales' testimony, "Those questions are going to be outstanding to the White House people.

"I believe we will have an opportunity to question them," Specter predicted, but he added, "What the quality of the answers will be remains to be seen."

Others, however, suggest that they'd prefer that Gonzales resign so that the president and his inner circle would be spared from more investigation.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., told Gonzales he should resign, but added, "I disavow aggressively any implication that there was a political nature in this. I know that's the politics of the blood sport that we're playing. I don't think it had anything to do with it."

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., told Gonzales "you should have said no" to whoever wanted to fire the attorneys. He said Friday that Gonzales should "take the weekend" to re-evaluate. "If he and the president decide that he cannot be an effective leader moving forward, then he should resign," Sessions said. But on neither occasion did Sessions go after the White House's role.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., all but told Gonzales he should go during the hearing, but he seemed to dismiss any idea of a cover-up.

"I do believe that your associates have prosecuted both Democrats and Republicans," Graham told him. "I don't believe that you're involved in a conspiracy to fire somebody because they wouldn't prosecute a particular enemy of a politician or a friend of a politician."

Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Fla., chairman of the House Republican Conference, said Gonzales' tenure is hurting the president's policy agenda, and he's worried that the Democrats are just looking for any reason to get Rove under oath.

The investigation shows that complaints about the fired U.S. attorneys came over a two-year period from grassroots Republicans who were upset with them for various reasons. Most of the complaints were rooted in partisan politics.

Some concerns were ideological, such as whether a prosecutor was doing enough in going after illegal immigration or pornography. Others reacted to some U.S. attorneys' decisions not to charge Democrats with corruption prior to elections or not to prosecute Democrats for voter fraud when prosecutors said the evidence simply wasn't sufficient.

Rove has acknowledged passing along complaints to the Justice Department, and a former Rove aide was chosen to replace one of the fired U.S. attorneys. E-mail traffic between Gonzales' chief of staff, who's since resigned, and a Rove deputy, reveals another connection.

Another e-mail released as part of the investigation shows a Rove deputy kept Rove abreast of turns in the controversy via Rove's Republican Party e-mail account rather than Rove's White House e-mail address.

The White House isn't authorizing Rove to testify publicly or to testify privately but with a transcript.

And when Congress told the Republican National Committee to turn over all pertinent e-mails, the administration instructed the RNC to give the e-mails to the White House, not to Congress. That standoff appears headed to court.
----------------------------------------

McClatchy Newspapers correspondent Marisa Taylor contributed to this report.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2007/04/20/gonzales/index.html

For those of you not familiar with "Fredo", he is a character from "The Godfather."


http://www.epinions.com/content_43426025092

And we all remember what happened to Fredo...

Grounds to impeach Gonzales?
Congress must act on the mounting evidence: He has not only abused his office but seriously injured the Constitution link

Mr Bush today claimed that the Gonzales appearance he saw clearly demonstrated that the AG is an honest person who can still be effective. And Mr Gonzales later said the same thing re effectiveness.

The term "lame duck" usually is regarded as a big negative for a President. Nothing gets done as Congress ignores the soon to be departing President. But it can work the other way, too. If he chooses to do so he can ignore all criticism. And that seems to the path Mr Bush is going down. He doesn't seem to be concerned that this may end up hurting folks in his own party. Loyalty to, and concern for, the people-the foot-soldiers who got him elected-matters not a wit.

Gonzales Hearing Showcases Policy Shift
Gonzales Hearing Showcases Policy Shift
By Jason McLure
The Legal Times
Monday 23 April 2007

Most of the public dissection of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's testimony last week dwelt on the pummeling he took at the hands of the Senate Judiciary Committee, particularly from members of his own party.

But beyond the relentless back-and-forth combat between Gonzales and hostile senators, some crucial details emerged about how management of the Justice Department has changed during the Bush administration.

Gonzales's testimony revealed a department that has lowered the traditional walls erected between the White House, Main Justice, and the U.S. Attorney's Offices in the field, former Justice officials say. And that could have a profound impact on the way the department carries out its business in the future.

One of the policy changes has to do with Gonzales's discussion about the rationale for firing U.S. Attorney Margaret Chiara, which the former officials say appeared to lay out a new and potentially troubling standard for measuring the management capabilities of U.S. attorneys.

The other, which emerged during questioning from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), is an apparent structural shift in the relationship between the Justice Department and the White House - a matter of renewed significance given the allegations that the Justice Department has been "politicized" during Gonzales's leadership.

With respect to Chiara, who was fired from her post as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Michigan, Gonzales gave a particularly vague standard for how U.S. attorneys were to be judged as managers.

In fact, Gonzales testified that he couldn't remember exactly why he fired Chiara on Dec. 7, but he said that after studying Justice Department documents in preparation for the hearing he had concluded that the reason was "poor management issues, loss of confidence by career individuals." The only evidence of mismanagement Gonzales offered, however, was that "we had to send someone out from Main Justice to help mediate some kind of personnel dispute."

Keeping Quiet

That, says one former Bush administration U.S. attorney, sends the wrong message to U.S. attorneys - who should use the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys to help with management issues in the office.

"What has the attorney general now done?" asks Thomas Heffelfinger, who was U.S. attorney in Minnesota from 2001 to 2006, and who worked closely with a number of the fired prosecutors. "He's now told U.S. attorneys that are now there, 'If you ask for help, you run the risk of getting fired.' How is that helping the management function of the U.S. attorneys?"

In fact, John Kelly, the deputy director of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys, was recently sent to Heffelfinger's old office to mediate after the office's three top assistant U.S. attorneys stepped down from their leadership positions - reportedly over discontent with the leadership of Heffelfinger's replacement, 34-year-old Rachel Paulose.

Paulose, who was appointed on an interim basis in March and later confirmed by the Senate, did not respond to a request for comment last week. But Heffelfinger says the attorney general has put Paulose and other U.S. attorneys in a difficult spot.

"It would seem to me if you set a standard, you need to apply it," says Heffelfinger. "Every U.S. attorney now has the precedent of a Margaret Chiara looking her in the face."

That, of course, presumes that the standard Gonzales set in Chiara's firing is a policy rather than an after-the-fact justification for someone who wasn't actually fired for performance reasons.

"I think they deserve their jobs back," says James Vines, who was U.S. attorney in the Middle District of Tennessee from 2002 to 2006. Vines, who is now a partner in the D.C. office of King & Spalding, acknowledges that such a move may be impractical - but says that something immediate needs to be done to return credibility to the department. "I think very solid leadership needs to be restored at the Department of Justice, whatever it takes to get there," Vines says.

That the rationale for some of the U.S. attorneys' firings may have been conceived after they were already dismissed was the view of one Republican senator at the hearing.

"Mr. Attorney General, most of this is a stretch," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). "It's clear to me that some of these people just had personality conflicts with people in your office and the White House, and we made up reasons to fire them ... and some of it sounds good and some of it doesn't."

A Much Bigger Loop

In addition, the hearing threw light on a policy that appears to have allowed the Justice Department and the White House to become much more closely linked structurally during the Bush administration - in a way perhaps unmatched since the Watergate era. The change was highlighted during questioning late in the day by Whitehouse, himself a former U.S. attorney and the most junior member of the panel.

Whitehouse highlighted two memos - one written in 1994 by then-Attorney General Janet Reno, and another written in 2002 by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft - that defined the channels through which the White House and the Justice Department could discuss criminal investigations.

Reno's memo, issued on Sept. 29, 1994, and addressed to Lloyd Cutler, then special counsel to the president, said, "Initial communications between the White House and the Justice Department regarding any pending Department investigation or criminal or civil case" could take place only among a handful of senior officials.

At the Justice Department, the only officials authorized to have such discussions were the three highest-ranking officials: the attorney general, the deputy attorney general, and the associate attorney general. The only officials they were authorized to speak with about such matters at the White House were the president, the vice president, and the White House counsel and deputy counsel.

But, says one former Reno Justice Department official, that memo merely memorialized Justice Department tradition. "The Clinton policy is not really a Clinton policy," says Nicholas Gess, who was an associate deputy attorney general under Reno. "It's a historical policy going back as far as anyone remembers."

Gess says that the policy has its roots in the Justice Department's post-Watergate reforms, after President Richard Nixon had used the FBI and other agencies to investigate his political enemies, and that contacts between the White House and Justice in the Clinton years about ongoing criminal matters were limited to extraordinary cases, such as the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.

But the policy was changed in April 2002, when Ashcroft issued a revised memo dramatically expanding the number of employees at both the White House and the Justice Department who could discuss criminal investigations. Ashcroft's memo, in effect, stated that at the Justice Department, not only the attorney general and deputy attorney general but members of their staff, as well, would be allowed to discuss criminal investigations with the White House. Likewise, at the White House, lower-ranking officials in the Offices of the President, the Vice President, and the White House Counsel would be permitted to be party to such discussions.

At the Justice Department, the memo expanded the number of officials authorized to have these discussions from three to more than 30. And at the White House, it expanded the figure from four to more than 100. Under Ashcroft and now Gonzales, junior political aides - at both Justice and the White House - have had authorization to discuss ongoing criminal matters.

"The way this policy reads, an intern in the office of the deputy attorney general could be communicating about case-related information to an intern at the White House Counsel's Office," Gess says.

During the hearing, Whitehouse questioned Gonzales about whether it was wise to allow so many people to discuss criminal matters between the Justice Department and the White House.

"What possible interest in the administration of justice is there to kick the portal so wide open that this many people now can engage directly about criminal cases and matters as compared to before?" Whitehouse asked Gonzales at the hearing.

Gonzales, who was White House counsel at the time of Ashcroft's memo, offered no insight into why changing the policy was a good idea. "You raise a good point here, one that I was concerned about at the Counsel's Office and I remained concerned [about] as attorney general," Gonzales said, adding: "I'm not aware that there are initial contacts between the White House and the Department of Justice with respect to specific criminal matters, or if there are, I don't think there should be."

Of particular interest to Whitehouse was an assertion made by John McKay, who was fired from his post as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington. McKay told The Washington Post last month that during an interview for a federal judgeship with then-White House counsel Harriet Miers in August 2006, Miers told him that he had "mishandled" a voter-fraud investigation during Washington's gubernatorial election in 2004.

(McKay told Legal Times last month that his office had thoroughly investigated voter-fraud allegations. "There was never any credible evidence submitted to the FBI or my office that indicated a crime occurred," he said.)

If McKay's story is true, Whitehouse concluded, either Miers had no basis to make such an assessment, or she had been given information about a federal criminal investigation.

The attorney general said he had no knowledge of Miers's conversations with McKay, but he said that Whitehouse's sentiments paralleled his own.

Said Gonzales, "I, like you, am concerned about ensuring that the contacts between the White House and the Department of Justice occur within the appropriate channels."

Miers Weighed Yang's Firing According to Senator Feinstein
Miers Weighed Yang's Firing According to Senator Feinstein
By Susan Crabtree
The Hill
Tuesday 24 April 2007

Former White House Counsel Harriet Miers discussed firing ex-U.S. Attorney Debra Yang, who was leading an investigation into lucrative ties between Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) and a lobbying firm before she left her government post voluntarily last fall, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) charged in a hearing last week.

Feinstein has repeatedly questioned the circumstances surrounding Yang's departure, but until last week she provided no reasons for her suspicions. Last Thursday, however, during the questioning of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales late in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Feinstein flatly stated that Miers had discussed "whether to remove Debra Yang from Los Angeles."

A Feinstein spokesman indicated only that the senator had learned that Miers had considered ousting Yang "through interviews" and did not respond to repeated questions to elaborate. Andrew Koneschusky, a spokesman to Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is leading the probe, also did not respond to questions about whether Miers had targeted Yang and any evidence Feinstein may have about it.

Yang resigned last October, months before Democrats began reviewing the Justice Department's decision to fire eight other federal prosecutors. According to a report in the American Lawyer, she was lured away by a $1.5 million-plus offer to become a partner at Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher LLP, which is defending Lewis in the probe.

Yang will co-chair the firm's crisis-management practice group, along with Theodore B. Olson, the former solicitor general of the Bush administration who is now at the firm's D.C. office. Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Douglas Fuchs, Yang's colleague at the Los Angeles U.S. attorney's office, also has joined her at Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher. Yang and Fuchs have recused themselves from working on Lewis's defense.

Fuchs did not respond to The Hill's queries. Yang responded by e-mail yesterday but gave no details, saying only she had been busy with work and had not followed Feinstein's comments about Miers.

In an interview with The Hill last month, Yang dismissed questions about the timing of her departure, which occurred about a month before seven other U.S. attorneys were fired late last year. She argued that she left for personal reasons based on financial concerns and the fact that she is a single mother. She said it had nothing to do with the firings of other U.S. federal prosecutors.

While Feinstein has repeatedly questioned the motive behind Yang's decision to leave the U.S. attorney job, she provided no reasons for her suspicion before the hearing.

"I have questions about Debra Yang's departure and I can't answer those questions right at this time," Feinstein told reporters on March 20. "Was she asked to resign, and if so, why? We have to ferret that out."

Feinstein also contends that former San Diego U.S. Attorney Carol Lam's firing is connected to her role in the investigation of former GOP Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (Calif.), who is in jail for accepting bribes in return for contracts. The Lewis probe is related to the Cunningham probe, which has recently ballooned to include the former third-highest ranking official at the CIA as well as a San Diego businessman.

The Justice Department has denied any relationship between Lam's firing and the Cunningham investigation.

In her previous comments to The Hill, Yang argued that her departure would not affect the case against Lewis in any way, noting that the Justice Department said it would have allowed her to stay in the position "as long as I wanted to."

"The investigation [into Lewis] would never be delayed or affected in any way because of my departure," she said. "We had 260 attorneys in that office."

She said she had been looking for a more lucrative position in the private sector for months. She added that a longtime friend in the Orange County office of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, Nick Hanna, was the one who first contacted her about the position, not Olson or anyone else with close ties to the Bush administration. She also said she turned down a more lucrative offer from another firm.

Meanwhile, Schumer ridiculed the White House's latest words of support for Gonzales.

"I heard what the president had to say this morning," Schumer told reporters on a conference call yesterday.

"Unfortunately, it's just like Iraq because both with the Justice Department and Iraq, only the president and a small band of advisers don't believe we need a change in course."

Schumer said Democrats are still trying to figure out who was at the center of the plan to fire eight U.S. attorneys. He said they plan to review the Gonzales transcript from last Thursday and compare that with testimony and interviews from other Department of Justice staff and explore any inconsistencies. He also said Democrats plan to question Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty and Assistant Attorney General William Moschella, most likely on Friday.

"When you go over the attorney general's testimony ... the arrow points more and more to the White House ... in regards to who put together the list," he said.

Schumer also said the committee wanted to know more about the dismissal of former U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton, who was investigating Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) before being fired in December. Renzi stepped down from the House intelligence panel last week after the FBI searched a business owned by his wife.

Schumer said Senate Democrats also continue to try to work out an agreement with former Justice aide Monica Goodling to testify and with the administration to gain testimony from White House staffers. If the Bush administration continues to refuse a written transcript of the testimony, Schumer added, Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) will be forced to issue subpoenas.

Why is the country run by people who celebrate mediocrity and recruit from Pat Robertson's law school? Because the right-wing crusade to demonize elites has succeeded.

By Bill Maher

April 13, 2007 | Say it loud: I'm elite and proud! The right-wing crusade to demonize elites has paid off. Now the country's run by incompetents who make mediocrity a job requirement and recruit from Pat Robertson's law school. New rule: Now that liberals have taken back the word liberal, they also have to take back the word "elite." By now you've heard the constant right-wing attacks on the "elite," or as it's otherwise known, "hating." They've had it up to their red necks with the "elite media." The "liberal elite." Who may or may not be part of the "Washington elite." A subset of the "East Coast elite." Which is influenced by "the Hollywood elite." So basically, unless you're a shitkicker from Kansas, you're with the terrorists. If you played a drinking game in which you did a shot every time Rush Limbaugh attacked someone for being "elite" you'd almost be as wasted as Rush Limbaugh.

I don't get it: In other fields -- outside of government -- elite is a good thing, like an elite fighting force. Tiger Woods is an elite golfer. If I need brain surgery, I'd like an elite doctor. But in politics, elite is bad -- the elite aren't down-to-earth and accessible like you and me and President ****-for-Brains. But when the anti-elite crowd demonizes the elite, what they're actually doing is embracing incompetence. Now, I know what you're thinking: That doesn't sound like our president -- ignoring intelligence.



You know how whenever there's a major Bush administration scandal it always traces back to some incompetent political hack appointment and you think to yourself, "Where are they getting these screw-ups from?" Well, now we know: from Pat Robertson. I wish I were kidding, but I'm not. Take Monica Goodling, who before she resigned last week because of the U.S. attorneys scandal, was the third most powerful official in the Justice Department of the United States. Thirty-three, and though she had never even worked as a prosecutor, she was tasked with overseeing the job performance of all 95 U.S. attorneys. How do you get to be such a top dog at 33? By acing Harvard, or winning scholarship prizes? No, Goodling did her undergraduate work at Messiah College -- home of the "Fighting Christies," who wait-listed me, the bastards -- and then went on to attend Pat Robertson's law school.

I'm not kidding, Pat Robertson, the man who said gay people at DisneyWorld would cause "earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor," has a law school. It's called Regent. Regent University School of Law, and it shares a campus with Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network studios. It's the first time ever that a TV network spun off a law school. And that's all America needs -- more Christians and more lawyers. You see, years ago Pat became concerned that our legal system was coddling criminals, forgiving them instead of meting out that Old Testament "eye for an eye" justice Jesus Christ never shuts up about. So Pat did what any red-blooded, Hindu-hating, gay-baiting, glue-sniffing Christian would do: He started his own law school. And what kid wouldn't want to attend? It's three years and you only have to read one book. The school says its mission is to create an army of evangelical lawyers, integrating the Bible and public policy, and producing graduates that provide "Christian leadership to change the world." Presumably from round back to flat.

U.S. News and World Report, which does the definitive ranking of colleges, lists Regent as a tier-four school, which is the lowest score it gives. It's not a hard school to get into. You have to renounce Satan and draw a pirate on a matchbook. This is for the people who couldn't get into the University of Phoenix.

But there's more! As there inevitably is with the Bush administration. Turns out she's not the only one. Since 2001, 150 graduates of Regent University have been hired by the Bush administration. And people wonder why things are so screwed up. Hell, we probably invaded Iraq because one of these clowns read the map wrong. Forget religion for a second, we're talking about a top Justice Department official who went to a college founded by a TV host. Would you send your daughter to Maury Povich University? And if you did, would you expect her to get a job at the White House? I'd be surprised if she got a job on the "Maury" show. And then it hit me: This is why Bush scandals never catch on with the public -- they're all evangelicals of course, and nobody is having sex.

So there you have it: It turns out that the Justice Department is entirely staffed with Jesus freaks from a televangelist diploma mill in Virginia Beach. Most of them young women with very little knowledge of the law, but a very strong sense of doing what they're told. Like the Manson family, but with cleaner hair. In 200 years we've gone from "We the people" to "Up with people." From the best and brightest to dumb and dumber. And, come on, America is a big, well-known, first-rate country, and when we're looking for people to help run it, we should aim higher than the girl who answers the phone at the fake abortion clinic. It's not just that this president has surrounded himself with a Texas echo chamber of war criminals and religious fanatics. It's that they're sooooo mediocre. This is America. We should be getting robbed and fucked over by the best.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., asked at a hearing, "Should we be concerned with the experience level of the people who are making these highly significant decisions?" But in the Bush administration experience doesn't matter. All that matters is loyalty to Bush and Jesus, in that order. And where better to find people dumb enough to believe in George W. Bush than Pat Robertson's law school. The problem here in America isn't that the country is being run by elites. It's that it's being run by a bunch of hayseeds. And by the way, the lawyer Monica Goodling just hired to keep her ass out of jail went to a real law school.

US Attorney Under Attack for "Terror Trophy" Prose
US Attorney Under Attack for "Terror Trophy" Prosecutions
By William Fisher
t r u t h o u t | Report
Friday 27 April 2007

A small but increasingly vocal group of protesters is charging that a United States attorney in northern New York has pursued a series of terror-related "political prosecutions" to enhance his reputation as "a loyal Bushie" and thus avoid the fate of eight of his colleagues recently fired by Alberto Gonzales's Department of Justice.

A spokesman for the group, Madis Senner, claims that US Attorney Glenn Suddaby prosecuted Dr. Rafil Dhafir, Yassin Muhiddin Aref and his co-defendant, Mohammed Mosharref Hossain, and the so-called St. Patrick's Four, to win "political trophies" in the Global War on Terror.

The group has been holding a series of "witnesses" in Syracuse, New York, and other upstate communities to register their opposition to what they label "terror trophy" prosecutions by Suddaby.

"We are hoping to get [Sen. Charles] Schumer (D-New York) and Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) to look beyond the firing of those who would not play ball with the Bush administration, and to focus on those such as Suddaby who were all too willing to do whatever their master asked. If we can do that, it will help free Dhafir, Aref, Hossain and a lot of other Muslim and Arab-Americans who have been unjustly punished since 9/11," Senner told Truthout.

Suddaby has repeatedly denied that any of the prosecutions were politically motivated. He was not immediately available for comment.

The prosecution of Dr. Dhafir, an oncologist from Manlius, New York, a community near Syracuse, was arguably the most high-profile of these prosecutions. Dhafir was arrested in February 2003 in a raid that drew nationwide media coverage. Long before his trial began, he was labeled "a terrorist" by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and New York Governor George Pataki. But reference to terrorism or to Dhafir's Muslim faith was not permitted in court, and no terrorism charges were ever brought against him. His supporters claim he was "selectively prosecuted."

Dhafir was convicted in February 2005 of 59 criminal counts, including money laundering; conspiracy to violate US sanctions against Iraq; misusing $2 million that donors contributed to his unlicensed charity, Help the Needy; spending $544,000 for his own purposes; defrauding Medicare out of $316,000, and evading $400,000 in federal income tax payments by writing off the illegal charity donations.

Prosecutors said Dhafir's Syracuse-based charity solicited more than $5 million over the Internet and by mail between 1995 and February 2002, claiming it would help starving Iraqi orphans and poor children. The government was able to trace only about $160,000 in Iraq.

But according to Dhafir's attorney, Deveraux L. Cannick, "When the government failed to link him to any terrorists or terrorist groups, it charged him with fraud to save face. Other individuals and corporations that sent money to Iraq received only civil penalties, not criminal charges," he said.

Dhafir was denied bail four times - he was deemed a flight risk - and held for nearly two years while awaiting trial. Cannick said Dhafir's detention hindered his defense and violated his Sixth Amendment right to counsel.

Civil liberties groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union protested Dhafir's conviction and sentence. He is currently appealing. His supporters have set up several websites, including (www.loyalbushie.com) and (www.jubileeinitiative.org/FreeDhafir.htm).

Now 60, Dhafir is serving his 22-year prison sentence in the recently created Communications Management Unit, or CMU, at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. Most of the unit's initial group of inmates are Arab Muslims, including five members of the so-called Lackawanna Six, a group of Yemeni nationals who pleaded guilty in 2003 to attending an al-Qaeda training camp.

The CMU closely monitors all telephone calls and mail and limits the number of phone calls and visits at the unit. Inmate conversations must be conducted in English unless otherwise negotiated.

"The government targeted Dr. Dhafir to be a trophy in the war on terror," said protester Madis Senner.

"They called him a terrorist. They denied him bail. They made it so he couldn't even defend himself properly. This was all done on Mr. Ashcroft's watch. We want to hear his explanation," Senner said.

"We have to wonder whether the Bush administration selected, orchestrated and directed Dr. Dhafir's prosecution," Senner told the Associated Press.

Ashcroft recently spoke at Syracuse University's Goldstein Auditorium at the invitation of the school's College Republicans organization. The former US senator was attorney general from 2001 to 2005. He orchestrated the round-ups and detention of hundreds of Muslims and South Asians following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and played a leading role in passage of the USA Patriot Act.

Suddaby also prosecuted a group that came to be known as the St. Patrick's Four, because their arrest took place on St. Patrick's Day of 2003. The four peace activists from Ithaca, New York, poured their own blood on the walls, posters, windows and a US flag at a military recruiting center in order to try to stop the imminent invasion of Iraq.

The group admitted their actions, which claimed they were based on international law, then knelt in prayer and waited to be arrested.

Charged in state court, they convinced nine jurors that their actions were consistent with international law. Daniel Burns, 43; Clare Grady, 45; Teresa Grady, 38, and Peter DeMott, 57, are all members of the Magnificat Catholic Worker community in Ithaca.

They testified that they risked arrest in order to protect members of the US military and civilians in Iraq.

Following their acquittal, the local district attorney announced he would not reprosecute them. But the US attorney, Glenn Suddaby, stepped into the case and pressed four federal charges arising from the same incident: federal conspiracy "by force, intimidation, and threat" to impede an officer of the United States - a felony charge punishable by up to six years in prison and a $250,000 fine - and criminal damage to property and two counts of trespass, charges punishable by up to an additional two years in prison.

A jury acquitted the four of the felony charges but convicted them of the lesser misdemeanor charges. They served prison sentences ranging from four to eight months. All have since been released.

According to Senner, the St. Patrick's Four (www.stpatricksfour.org) "were also selectively prosecuted." After a local jury could not convict them, "Suddaby's office brought federal conspiracy charges against them. Bill Quigley, the defense lawyer for the four, said he could find no similar case of federal conspiracy charges, going back to the Nixon era. He called it an attempt to 'hyper-criminalize dissent'."

In nearby Albany, New York, the state's capital, US Attorney Suddaby also led the prosecution of Yassin Muhiddin Aref, 36, and Mohammed Mosharref Hossain, 51, both of Albany. Aref was a local part-time ambulette driver and the imam, or spiritual leader, of the Central Avenue mosque. Hossain was an Albany pizzeria owner who also owned rental properties in the community.

The men were charged with promoting terrorism and conspiring to launder money with an FBI informant. The informant baited both men with a phony scheme to purchase a surface-to-air rocket launcher for a fictitious plot to assassinate a Pakistani ambassador to the United Nations.

They were denied bail as flight risks, despite a declaration by the judge in the case that there was "less than overwhelming evidence" against them. The judge said that the question of whether or not entrapment comes into play in the case is a matter for a jury to decide. However, he said, the "weight of evidence" against both defendants on their willingness to "associate themselves" with the rocket purchase and terrorist plot is another story entirely."

Hossain's attorney, Kevin Luibrand, said the government's entire case was based on entrapment, and that his client had been a hard-working American citizen for 10 years and had no criminal past over the 20 years he's spent in this country.

"Entrapment is the central issue here.... They (FBI) didn't go to a church or synagogue, they went to Muslims," said Luibrand. "This guy is an American citizen who works like a dog and could give a damn about terrorism."

"The Albany Muslim community finds the allegations against Yasin Aref and Mohammed Hossain deeply troubling," said Faisal Ahmed, a teacher at Masjid-As-Salam. "The idea that such (men) could be deliberately involved in violent activity is unbelievable."

After a month-long trial that ended in October 2006, both men were found guilty of conspiracy to engage in money laundering, money laundering, conspiracy to provide material support in connection with an attack with a weapon of mass destruction, two substantive acts of material support in connection with an attack involving a weapon of mass destruction, conspiracy to provide material support to a known terrorist organization, two acts of material support to a designated terrorist organization, and one count of lying to the FBI.

Each was sentenced to a to a 15-year prison term.

US Attorney Suddaby contended there was "ample justification to initiate a sting operation." He added, "The FBI has an obligation to use all available investigative tools, including a sting operation, to remove those ready and willing to help terrorists from our streets. The jury's verdict - representing the jury's thoughtful consideration of testimony and evidence presented during the month-long trial - makes clear that both Aref and Hossain fall into this category."

Suddaby denies he ever felt any pressure from the Justice Department to bring, or to decline to bring, any prosecution. But he readily acknowledges that counter-terrorism has been the number one DOJ priority.

In a recent interview, Syracuse Post-Standard reporter Hart Seely asked Suddaby how the 9/11 terrorist attacks affected the priorities and track record of his office.

Suddaby responded, "It changed everything. The FBI, the major federal investigative agency, all of a sudden, became a terrorism prevention agency.... A majority of their investigative resources have been focused on terrorism, and that includes a lot of times doing 'intel.' They don't generate cases, but they're out there, pounding the pavement, trying to develop sources, talking to people, trying to get the information flow of what's going on in the community of the Northern District. If there is a threat, they want to feel confident that they're going to hear about it, that they're going to get tipped off in some way."

But some legal authorities point out that there have been very few terrorism convictions since 9/11.

Independent activist Katherine Hughes, one of the leaders of the "Free Dhafir" movement, told Truthout, "When [Attorney General John] Ashcroft announced his resignation in November of 2004, he gave as evidence of success in the war on terror 211 criminal prosecutions, 478 deportations and $124 million in frozen assets. But what he neglected to mention was that virtually none of these cases were actual terrorism convictions. Like Dhafir, other charity associates were convicted of white-collar crime and sanctions violation. Indeed, at the time of Ashcroft's resignation there was only one bona fide terrorism conviction, that of the shoe bomber Richard Reid."

A former prosecutor who declined to be identified, but who is familiar with the inner workings of the Justice Department, told Truthout, "US attorneys are well aware of their bosses' priorities. Since 9/11, all of them have been under pressure to bring terrorism prosecutions. In many cases, that has led them and their superiors, as well as prominent politicians, to call high-profile press conferences where they announce terrorism charges against people, but when they show up in court, there are no actual terrorism charges."

US attorneys "are instead prosecuting cases against people for providing material support for terrorists or terrorist organizations. There's nothing illegal about that - it's authorized by the Patriot Act. The question is always whether they're stretching the evidence, or intentionally exploiting people's fears of another 9/11, or being overzealous to the point of committing prosecutorial misconduct. Just look at Jose Padilla - he was accused of being 'the dirty bomber' who was going to blow up an American city. But, after years in custody without charges, by the time he appeared in an actual courtroom, the dirty bomb charge had vanished."

Citizen pushback against overzealous prosecutors appears to be on the rise. It comes at a time when the controversy over the firings of US attorneys has become a contentious political issue that threatens to trigger the early departure of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The DOJ's credibility has been further damaged by accounts of increasing departures of DOJ lawyers. The National Law Journal reported this week, "The number of attorneys defecting from the US Department of Justice to private practice is mounting as the head of the agency continues to fend off calls for his ouster over the firing of eight US attorneys. In the last month alone, several attorneys in key posts at the DOJ have taken jobs at prominent law firms."
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William Fisher has managed economic development programs in the Middle East and in many other parts of the world for the US State Department and USAID for the past thirty years. He began his work life as a journalist for newspapers and for the Associated Press in Florida. Go to The World According to Bill Fisher for more.

Administration considered firing additional U.S. attorneys
Apr. 27, 2007
Administration considered firing additional U.S. attorneys
By Margaret Talev, Ron Hutcheson and Marisa Taylor
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON -Senior congressional aides who have seen unedited internal documents say the Bush administration considered firing at least a dozen U.S. attorneys before settling on eight late last year.

The four who escaped dismissal came from states that the White House considered political battlegrounds in the last presidential election: Missouri, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Two of the four said they resigned voluntarily before eight U.S. attorneys were fired on Dec. 7. Two continue to serve as federal prosecutors.

The latest revelation could provide new fodder to critics who contend that politics, not policy or performance, played the determining role in the firing decisions. At the very least, it opens new avenues of inquiry for investigators from the House of Representatives and Senate Judiciary Committees.

The White House and the Justice Department have denied repeatedly that politics played any role in the firings.

The congressional aides, who asked not to be identified because they weren't authorized to discuss the information publicly, on Friday confirmed to McClatchy Newspapers that former U.S. Attorney Todd Graves of Kansas City, Mo., and U.S. Attorney Thomas Marino of Scranton, Pa., were among the 12 whose jobs were in jeopardy.

Graves resigned in March to return to private legal practice. Marino kept his job as the chief federal prosecutor in central and eastern Pennsylvania.

Graves said Friday he was surprised to learn that he had been considered a possible target for dismissal, but he expressed relief that he was no longer with the Justice Department.

"The current environment at the department can only be described as toxic. ... What is going on now in D.C. is a three-ring circus, and I don't want anything to do with it," he told The Kansas City Star.

Marino didn't respond to requests for comment Friday.

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse declined to discuss any of the redacted names. He said the Justice Department withheld the names of prosecutors who had been considered for possible dismissal to protect their reputations and "their ability to function effectively as U.S. attorneys or professionals in other roles."

McClatchy previously identified two other prosecutors who were dropped from the final list: former U.S. Attorney Thomas Heffelfinger of Minneapolis and U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic of Milwaukee. Heffelfinger resigned in February to go into private legal practice. Biskupic remains at his federal post in Wisconsin.

It's not clear why any of the four prosecutors who were dropped from the list were initially targeted or what led to their reprieves. Biskupic and Heffelfinger have said that they were unaware that they were at risk of losing their jobs.

The administration has declined to disclose the full list of U.S. attorneys who had been considered possible targets for dismissal, but redacted documents that the administration released to Congress left no doubt that other prosecutors had been targeted.

The names of three possible targets were edited out of a Jan. 9, 2006, internal Justice Department e-mail, leaving blank spaces on a list that included four prosecutors who were later forced out. But some congressional investigators were allowed to review unedited department documents.

In Missouri, a traditional battleground state, Graves won good reviews from law enforcement officials and local prosecutors before he announced his decision to step down. The Bush appointee came under fire from Missouri Democrats in 2005 when Republican Gov. Matt Blunt awarded a $2.6 million no-bid contract to Graves' wife, Tracy, allowing her to run a state motor vehicle fee office.

The family connection to Blunt became a problem for Graves when the governor was caught in a corruption investigation involving state contracts. Graves recused himself, and Cummins, the top federal prosecutor in neighboring Arkansas, took over. He ultimately dropped the case without issuing any indictments.

Graves was replaced by an interim prosecutor until U.S. Attorney John Wood, a distant cousin of Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo., took the job in April.

In Pennsylvania, Marino had considered stepping down earlier this year to run for his old job as a state district attorney in Lycoming County. He decided against it and continues to serve as a federal prosecutor.

http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/070430nj1.htm



This was never disclosed to Congress at any point; whoops.

The two aides?



mmm hmm.

Cycloptichorn