If this case was just about replacing political appointees with ones of your party there wouldn't be much here.
(Presidents can't replace "civil servants" with ones of their party. The law protects career civil servants from that.)
This case has turned into 2 things having nothing to do with the simple replacement of political appointees.
1.) lawmakers attempting to interfere with the investigation and prosecution of crimes. Not only is this unethical but it may be illegal.
2.) A series of lies and half truths told to Congress and the American people to try to hide the actions leading up to the replacements. Whether it was innocent or not, the coverup certainly raises suspicions. Retaliation against those prosecutors is certainly something the public has right to be aware of.
Parados, I have not delved into this very far, but this: I heard Pete Domenici made a call to one attorney very upset about voter fraud not being prosecuted. Now, is this call against the law, or is it righteous indignation being expressed by my congresseman that I as a citizen should appreciate? I don't know the exact answer to this, as regards the law, but if Domenici called an attorney and threatened that attorney in vague terms because he was going forward with a case against a friend or some such thing, then I would view that as a bigger problem in reverse. Upon investigation, I think there is ample possibility that some or all of the attorneys were not performing up to snuff. One area of complaint was having no interest in voter fraud. Parados, I believe this is one huge area they should be most interested in, so if they showed no interest in it, they should have been replaced.
Democrats love to accuse voter fraud, but in reality, I believe there is much more fraud being carried out for the Democrats than in reverse.
Aborted DOJ Probe Probably Would Have Targeted Gonzales
Aborted DOJ Probe Probably Would Have Targeted Gonzales
By Murray Waas
The National Journal
Thursday 15 March 2007
Shortly before Attorney General Alberto Gonzales advised President Bush last year on whether to shut down a Justice Department inquiry regarding the administration's warrantless domestic eavesdropping program, Gonzales learned that his own conduct would likely be a focus of the investigation, according to government records and interviews.
Bush personally intervened to sideline the Justice Department probe in April 2006 by taking the unusual step of denying investigators the security clearances necessary for their work.
It is unclear whether the president knew at the time of his decision that the Justice inquiry - to be conducted by the department's internal ethics watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility - would almost certainly examine the conduct of his attorney general.
Sources familiar with the halted inquiry said that if the probe had been allowed to continue, it would have examined Gonzales's role in authorizing the eavesdropping program while he was White House counsel, as well as his subsequent oversight of the program as attorney general.
Both the White House and Gonzales declined comment on two issues - whether Gonzales informed Bush that his own conduct was about to be scrutinized, and whether he urged the president to close down the investigation, which had been requested by Democratic members of Congress.
Current and former Justice Department officials, as well as experts in legal ethics, question the propriety of Gonzales's continuing to advise Bush about the investigation after learning that it might examine his own actions. The attorney general, they say, was remiss if he did not disclose that information to the president. But if Gonzales did inform Bush about the possibility and the president responded by stymieing the probe, that would raise even more-serious questions as to whether Bush acted to protect Gonzales, they said.
President Bush's shutting down of the Justice Department probe was disclosed in July. However, it has not been previously reported that investigators were about to question at least two crucial witnesses and examine documents that might have shed light on Gonzales's role in authorizing and overseeing the eavesdropping program.
Investigators from the Office of Professional Responsibility notified senior aides to Gonzales early last year that the first two people they intended to interview were Jack Goldsmith, who had been an assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, and James A. Baker, the counsel for Justice's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review. Both men had raised questions about the propriety and legality of various aspects of the eavesdropping program, which was undertaken after September 11 as an anti-terrorism tool.
H. Marshall Jarrett, the head of OPR, informed senior Justice officials in a January 20, 2006, memo that he had "asked the Office of Legal Counsel to pro'ide information and documents in its possession relating to the [National Security Agency] program." The memo also said that the office had asked Baker to "submit to an interview concerning the NSA program and its relationship to the department's dealings with the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] court."
Law enforcement officials said that Gonzales's senior aides then informed him that OPR wanted to launch its inquiry by interviewing Goldsmith and Baker.
Goldsmith and others within the Office of Legal Counsel had clashed with Gonzales when Gonzales had been a strong advocate of the eavesdropping program during his tenure as White House counsel. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and then-Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey shared some of the same concerns as Goldsmith about the program's legality, according to interviews with current and former officials and to published accounts.
The Justice Department officials told Gonzales and other White House aides in early 2004 that they would not support the reauthorization of the program, which was first authorized in 2002, unless changes were made to bring it into legal compliance.
Although the White House agreed to the modifications, some members of Congress, legal scholars, and several federal judges continued to express reservations that the program was outside the law or was unconstitutional. On January 17 of this year, the Bush administration altered the controversial program, saying it would no longer allow eavesdropping without warrants on electronic communications between individuals within the U.S. and individuals abroad having suspected terrorist ties. The administration agreed that all requests for electronic eavesdropping would, as was the case before the program's inception, be subject to judicial review by a special federal court under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Worries at Justice
A senior federal law enforcement official said that after OPR launched its inquiry in early 2006, Justice Department political appointees were concerned that the internal ethics office might conclude that Gonzales or other administration officials had sidestepped the law in the authorization and oversight of the program.
OPR did not have a mandate to determine whether the eavesdropping program itself was illegal or unconstitutional. Rather, the office was to investigate "allegations of misconduct involving department attorneys that relate to the exercise of their authority to investigate, litigate, or provide legal advice," according to the office's policies and procedures.
Baker, the counsel for Justice's intelligence office - and the second official whom OPR investigators were eager to interview - had warned the presiding judge of the FISA court that authorities improperly used information from the program to obtain surveillance warrants submitted to the court, Justice officials recalled in interviews.
If the Justice inquiry had been allowed to continue, Baker would almost certainly have been asked about any discussions he had with Gonzales and his top aides regarding these issues, according to officials close to the inquiry.
Jarrett undertook his investigation after receiving a request on January 9, 2006, from Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., and three other House Democrats. Hinchey and the other lawmakers were responding to a December 16, 2005, New York Times article that disclosed the program's existence.
In his January 20 memo, Jarrett asked that he, four other attorneys in his office, and two administrative aides receive security clearances so that they could proceed with their investigation. OPR had never before been denied security clearances in its three-decade existence, according to former Justice Department officials. And the Bush administration had granted such clearances to a score of other Justice officials, enabling them to learn classified details of the program, as well as to a group of private citizens on a presidential privacy board.
Stephen Gillers, a law professor at the New York University Sch'ol of Law and an expert on legal ethics issues, questioned Gonzales's continued role in advising Bush in any capacity about the probe after he learned that his own conduct might be scrutinized: "If the attorney general was on notice that he was a person of interest to the OPR inquiry, he should have stepped aside and not been involved in any decisions about the scope or the continuation of the investigation."
Robert Litt, a principal associate deputy attorney general during the Clinton administration, agreed. Gonzales "should have recused himself. He should not have played a role in an investigation that touches upon him."
An even more serious issue, according to Gillers, Litt, and others is whether Gonzales informed Bush that the investigation was going to examine his actions. "Did the president know that Gonzales might have been shutting down the police force when it was looking into his own behavior?" Gillers asked.
Charles Wolfram, a professor emeritus of legal ethics at Cornell University Law School, said that if Gonzales did not inform the president, Gonzales ill-served Bush and abused "the discretion of his office" for his own benefit. However, if Gonzales did inform Bush that the probe might harm Gonzales, then "both [men] are abusing the discretion of their offices," Wolfram said.
When it was disclosed in July that Bush himself had halted the OPR investigation, White House press secretary Tony Snow said that the president's decision was justified because the eavesdropping program was already subject to other executive branch oversight. "The Office of Professional Responsibility was not the proper venue for conducting that." Snow also said that the president's denial of the security clearances was warranted because "in the case of a highly classified program, you need to keep the number of people to it tight for reasons of national security, and that was what he did."
Contacted by National Journal, Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman, declined to comment about any conversations that took place between President Bush and his attorney general: "The White House does not comment on private conversations that the president has with his senior advisers and his Cabinet. And that has been, and will continue to be, our standard operating procedure. The attorney general is one such close adviser to the president."
Perino also said that any discussions between Bush and Gonzales regarding the OPR investigation were appropriate because "the terrorist surveillance program is a highly classified national security tool to fight the global war on terror."
According to accounts that Gonzales and his aides gave to others in the department, Gonzales did advise Bush on the issue of the OPR inquiry.
'Precluded'
In a March 21, 2006, memo citing his inability to obtain security clearances, Jarrett, the head of OPR, wrote to Paul McNulty, the deputy attorney general, complaining that OPR was being "precluded from performing its duties."
In contrast, Jarrett noted, the administration promptly approved "the Criminal Division's request for the same security clearances for a large team of attorneys and FBI agents that was investigating who initially leaked details of the NSA eavesdropping program to The New York Times."
Jarrett continued: "We have also learned that individuals involved in the Civil Division's response to legal challenges to the NSA program and responses to [Freedom of Information Act] litigation have received the same clearances. And according to the recent press reports, the five private individuals who make up the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board have been briefed on the NSA program and have been granted authorization to receive the clearances in question.
"In contrast, our repeated requests for access to classified information about the NSA program have not been granted. As a result, this office, which is charged with monitoring the integrity of the department's attorneys and with ensuring that the highest standards of professional ethics are maintained, has been'precluded from performing its duties."
A senior federal law enforcement official said in an interview that granting clearances to nongovernmental citizens while refusing to grant them to department attorneys demonstrates "that the decision not to grant clearances to OPR had everything to do with politics and nothing to do with keeping national security secrets."
Current and former Justice Department officials called Bush's actions unprecedented in the office's history.
Michael Shaheen, who headed OPR from its inception until 1997, told National Journal last May 27 that his staff "never, ever was denied a clearance" and that OPR had conducted numerous investigations involving the activities of other attorneys general. "No attorney general has ever said no to me," Shaheen said. "If I were still at OPR and was told I couldn't have security clearances, the first word out of my mouth ... would have been, 'Balderdash!'"
After Jarrett was unable to obtain the security clearances, he wrote to the members of Congress who had asked him to undertake the inquiry. "We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our investigation, because OPR has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program," Jarrett said in a letter to Rep. Hinchey dated May 10, 2006. "On May 9, 2006, we were informed that our requests had been denied. Without these clearances, we cannot investigate this matter and therefore have closed our investigation."
Hinchey and other Democratic House members asked Jarrett why he was unable to obtain the necessary clearances; Jarrett's superiors, according to government records and to interviews, instructed him not to inform Congress that President Bush had made the decision.
Jarrett thus wrote back to Hinchey and three other House Democrats on June 8 that he could not answer their questions because to do so "would require me to disclose client confidences and internal Justice Department deliberations, which I am precluded from doing."
On July 18, Gonzales himself disclosed that President Bush had halted the OPR probe. His disclosure came in response to a question by then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., in light of a May 27 National Journal story that raised questions as to who made the decision to deny OPR its security clearances.
Previously, Justice Department officials had suggested that the decision was made within the Justice Department itself, or because the National Security Agency did not want to grant those clearances.
The most detailed public explanation about the president's actions is contained in a July 27, 2006, letter from Assistant Attorney General William Moschella to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee:
"The president decided that protecting the secrecy and security of the program requires that a strict limit be placed on the number of persons granted access to information about the program for nonoperational reasons. Every additional security clearance that is granted for the [terrorist surveillance program] increases the risk that national security may be compromised."
Crucial Witnesses
Federal law enforcement officials said that Gonzales and his top aides learned about OPR's plans to scrutinize the attorney general from Jarrett. OPR's chief informed senior Justice officials that he wanted to review records of the Office of Legal Counsel, where Goldsmith and his aides had questioned the legality of some aspects of the NSA program, and to also interview Baker, who had raised other reservations about the implementation and auditing of the program. Both Goldsmith, now a Harvard Law School professor, and Baker declined to comment for this story.
Goldsmith, in particular, would have been a key witness to the OPR probe; as assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel, he began to develop reservations about the legality of certain aspects of the NSA eavesdropping program, according to published reports and interviews with current and former administration officials.
A'most immediately after being named as head of the legal counsel office, Goldsmith became a thorn in the side of the White House and, more particularly, to Vice President Dick Cheney, his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and his then-counsel, David Addington.
When he was named to his post, Goldsmith "seemed like a natural fit," a February 2006 Newsweek article recounted. "He was brilliant, a graduate of Oxford and Yale Law School, and he was a conservative." Over time, however, he became "the central figure in a secret but intense rebellion of a small coterie of Bush administration lawyers" against the White House's legal claims that the president should have "virtually unlimited powers in the war in terror."
Goldsmith had invoked the ire of Cheney and Addington shortly after joining Justice, when he considered withdrawing a former opinion by his office that allowed the use of torture against terrorism suspects.
"In frequent face-to-face confrontations," the article said, Addington "attacked Goldsmith for changing the rules in the middle of the game and putting brave men at risk."
Even worse, in the view of Cheney and Addington, Goldsmith began to question the legality of various aspects of the NSA eavesdropping program. Goldsmith found a sympathetic ear and ally when James Comey was appointed deputy attorney general in late 2003. A no-nonsense federal prosecutor who at the time of his appointment was the U.S. attorney general for the Southern District of Manhattan, Comey eschewed politics within an administration that demanded political loyalty, senior Justice officials recalled in interviews. Comey supported Goldsmith's contentions that absent significant changes to the eavesdropping program, portions of it were illegal.
Comey certainly would have been interviewed at length during the OPR probe, according to sources close to the investigation. Earlier, he had earned the enmity of some in the White House, a former senior administration official recalled in an interview, when Comey named a special prosecutor to investigate who leaked the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame to the media.
"Comey showed us that he was a guy who wouldn't be kept on a leash," said a former White House official, "in an administration that likes to keep everybody on a short leash."
In March 2004, while then-Attorney General Ashcroft was in the hospital, Comey faced down the White House, asserting that he wouldn't reauthorize the eavesdropping program unless it was brought within the law. Ultimately, a compromise was reached and the NSA eavesdropping program was reauthorized with the changes recommended by Goldsmith and Comey.
That Goldsmith, Baker, and Comey might be questioned as part of a Justice Department inquiry "must have raised the specter of a waking nightmare for the AG," a former senior Justice Department official said in an interview.
In the meantime, it is unlikely that Congress will find out anytime soon what Bush and Gonzales discussed regarding the OPR investigation.
Justice officials wrote then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Specter on July 17, 2006: "Consistent with long-standing executive practice, documents that reflect internal deliberations about these matters [will] not be produced."
It's a problem going forward or reverse, okie, it's a clear violation the House Ethics Rules for a Congressman to inject himself into the workings of a US Attorney's Office. Call Tom Coburn's office and ask him if he would ever call the US Attorney David E. O'Meilia and ask him whether or not he was going to indict you.
Joe(Tell'em I said to hurry it up)Nation
Bush is very comfortable with Gonzales. He lost his lapdog Tony Blair, but can still cuddle up with Alberto.
The prosecutor firings may have been legal, even though the motivation was that they wouldn't act as weapons against the Dems. However, there is an excellent chance that the firings will lead to legislation preventing this type of thing in the future. Government employees, who are paid by all of us, must not be used as political operatives.
Department of Justice release on the U.S. Attorneys scandel
I'm not surprised that the good ole "I don't remember" excuse is used to avoid lying. I wonder if Alberto would be dumb enough to lie under oath ala Scooter Libby style? ---BBB
Department of Justice release on the U.S. Attorneys scandel
McClatchy Nespapers
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE OPA
THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 2007 (202) 514-2007
WWW.USDOJ.GOV TDD (202) 514-1888
STATEMENT OF TASIA SCOLINOS, DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS
"The Attorney General has no recollection of any plan or discussion to replace U.S. Attorneys while he was still White House Counsel. The period of time referred to in the email was during the weeks he was preparing for his confirmation hearing, January 6th, 2005, and his focus was on that. Of course, discussions of changes in Presidential appointees would have been appropriate and normal White House exchanges in the days and months after the election as the White House was considering different personnel changes Administration wide."
Perhaps Alberto is suffering from Scooterheimer's.
Why Rove acted
Why did Karl Rove make the move to fire several U.S. Attorneys? It's obvious to me.
Rove did not want a repeat of the voters' disgust with Republican corruption and their defeat in the 2006 election. He needed to control what the U.S. Attorneys pursued in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election. His actions were classic Rove.
Rove wanted to replace the Arkansas U.S. Attorney to be sure his sycophant was in place in Arkansas because Hilly Clinton lived and worked in Arkansas. He wanted his agent in place to try to dig up dirt on her during the 2008 precedential campaign.
It would be interesting to learn if any of the other fired attorneys were from states where Democrats are presidential candidates---or Republican candidates---for the same purpose.
He wanted other Attorneys fired because they investigated and/or prosecuted Republican office holder corruption.
He wanted some Attorneys fired because they didn't prosecute claimed election fraud when their was not sufficient evidence. His interest was in Democrats, not Republicans. He showed no interest in rampant Republican voting impediments installed in Democrat minority communities.
Rove, as always, always takes action to advance and protect the Republican power structure. Gonzalves did his bidding.
BBB
Justice Dept. distances White House from firings of US attys
The cover-up goes on. Didn't they learn anything from the Plame scandal? ---BBB
Justice Dept. distances White House from firings of U.S. attorneys
By Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON - The Justice Department said Wednesday that revisions in the USA Patriot Act that gave the administration unprecedented powers to replace ousted U.S. attorneys were designed by a mid-level department lawyer without the knowledge of his superiors or anyone at the White House.
The provision allows the attorney general to appoint interim U.S. attorneys for the remainder of President Bush's term without Senate confirmation.
Over the last several days, the administration has been forced to explain a strategy that removed eight U.S. attorneys who had fallen out of favor with the administration and replaced them with loyalists. Critics contend the effort was inspired by election year politics and was retaliation against the more independent prosecutors.
Wednesday's explanation of the Patriot Act changes, along with the release of new e-mail correspondence, was meant to stave off mounting accusations by Democrats as their investigation into the administration's firing of the prosecutors widens. Democrats say they now are suspicious that the changes were part of an attempt to grab executive powers and play politics with prosecutorial appointments. They also accused the Justice Department of misleading Congress about the intent of the new law.
In e-mails released earlier this week, Justice Department officials discussed relying on the new powers to get "our preferred person appointed" with "far less deference to home state senators," according to an e-mail by Kyle Sampson, the former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
In an interview Wednesday, William Moschella, principal associate deputy attorney general, said that he pursued the changes on his own, without the knowledge or coordination of his superiors at the Justice Department or anyone at the White House.
Moschella maintained his intent was not to strip the Senate of the power to reject U.S. attorneys that might be objectionable. Justice Department officials noted that 16 U.S. attorneys nominations have been sent to the Senate since the passage of the law in March 2006.
"I did not intend nor was it the department position that this provision be used to circumvent the Senate's confirmation's role," Moschella said.
But neither Moschella nor other department officials disclosed at what point Moschella or anyone else at Justice realized the provision could be used as part of the wider strategy of replacing U.S. attorneys.
Moschella and department officials also could not explain why the then-assistant attorney general for legislative affairs was in a position to pursue such a change without input from others within the department or permission from superiors.
Moschella's disclosures came as Democrats continued to look for evidence that the Congress was misled about the reasons for changing the law.
Earlier Wednesday, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote to President Bush asking him to explain who in his administration crafted the provision and whether Bush knew of the effect of the changes before they became law.
"The evidence we've gotten seems to indicate the Patriot Act wasn't changed for the purposes that they first announced," Schumer said in an interview with McClatchy Newspapers, "but rather to make it easier to get rid of U.S. attorneys and appoint their own people without Senate confirmation."
Tim Griffin, who was appointed as an interim to fill the U.S. attorney's job in Little Rock, Ark., was a former aide to Bush's political advisor Karl Rove. Even though he said he would not seek Senate confirmation, Griffin said Wednesday he plans to remain in office as long as the administration wanted him to.
The e-mails released Wednesday show Moschella corresponding in 2004 with a Los Angeles attorney named Daniel Collins, who had previously worked for the Justice Department.
In telephone interviews, Moschella and Collins both said Collins had floated the idea of taking district judges out of the vacancy-filling process back in 2003, when he was still at Justice. A former assistant U.S. attorney, Collins said the ability of a district court judge to appoint an interim U.S. attorney if the Senate did not confirm a nominee raised constitutional questions about the separation of powers.
In 2004, Collins said Moschella e-mailed him saying he wanted to pursue such a change. Collins said he did not ask Moschella what triggered his interest and Moschella did not volunteer it.
Collins warned Moschella that if district judges lost their appointment power, the Justice Department would have to figure out how to fill the vacancies. Among the options were making rolling appointments; putting the deputy U.S. attorney in the job temporarily, or allowing the interim appointee to remain indefinitely, Collins said Wednesday.
Collins said that the last option "was certainly never my intention." He added that he did not know why Moschella chose to draft the provision that way.
None of the e-mails released so far by the Justice Department connects the White House's political team to the legislation prior to its passage. More documents are expected to arrive by week's end.
Until this year, most lawmakers were apparently unaware when they voted last March that the new provisions took away the Senate's power to reject interim U.S. attorneys.
Now (12:22pm EDST)
HEADLINE
White House Now Unsure if Firings Were Miers's Idea
Joe Nation wrote:Now (12:22pm EDST)
HEADLINE
White House Now Unsure if Firings Were Miers's Idea
Yeah, the memories are 'hazy' according to Tony Snow Job.
Cycloptichorn
Strategist Says Gonzales Is "Finished"
The Associated Press
Thursday 15 March 2007
Washington - Pressure mounted on the White House Thursday to fire Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for the abrupt dismissal of U.S. attorneys. More Republicans called for his ouster, and one Republican strategist close to the White House told CBS News that Gonzales is "finished."
Congressman Dana Rohrbacher became the latest Republican to say Gonzales should go, reports CBS News White House correspondent Jim Axelrod.
"Even for Republicans this is a warning sign
saying there needs to be a change," said Rohrbacher. "Maybe the president should have an attorney general who is less a personal friend and more professional in his approach."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031607B.shtml
Rohrback is as fringe right as they come. If he said that Alberto has to go, I would say that he is gone.
SCOTUS-gateWhat if Alberto Gonzales and Harriet Miers had been confirmed to the Supreme Court?
By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Thursday, March 15, 2007, at 6:22 PM ET
Harriet Miers
Nearly lost in all the hootin' and hollerin' about U.S. Attorney-gate is a delicious truth: Two of the worst offenders in this whole mess were at the top of President Bush's list to fill the U.S. Supreme Court vacancies last year. That's right, friends, had Bush had his way in the fall of 2005, we'd be looking today at a court fearlessly led by a Chief Justice Alberto Gonzales and starring an Associate Justice Harriet Miers.
Stop and savor the possibilities. Think what the past year at the high court would have looked like had the president managed to seat his two favorite lawyers. Just imagine, with me, the delicious scandals that might have ensued.
October 2005: Clerk-gate
Having won confirmation by a narrow margin, the new chief justice, Alberto Gonzales, takes his seat at the high court, bringing with him his four new law clerks, D. Kyle Sampson, Tim Griffin, Karl Rove, and Harriet Miers. Gonzales, at a press conference on the steps of the Supreme Court, announces that while it's certainly unusual to have a law clerk who is herself a nominee for a Supreme Court vacancy, the thought of being separated from Rove, the president, and Ms. Miers for any length of time was too awful to contemplate.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
October 2005: Quaint-gate
Presiding over his first oral argument, Chief Justice Alberto Gonzales stuns the gallery by replacing the four golden bars former Chief Justice William Rehnquist affixed to his robes with an embroidered golden image of President George W. Bush. Gonzales also summarily revokes the Supreme Court rules governing the number of votes required in order to hear a case. Under the new regime only one vote is required so long as it comes from the president. And he announces that his aforementioned law clerks will now sit at his side during oral argument. Gonzales further decrees that nobody may interrupt the solicitor general during his portion of oral argument. When challenged by his colleagues on these unilateral decisions, Gonzales replies that the old court rules were "quaint" and that a "new kind of court requires a new paradigm."
November 2005: Clerk-gate, Part II
Former White House counsel/Gonzales clerk Harriet Miers is confirmed to the high court by a narrow margin. She brings with her as clerks Jenna Bush, Barbara Bush, and Laura Bush. When queried by sitting Justice Stephen Breyer as to whether she wouldn't prefer to have a law clerk who had studied the law at some point, Miers confidently pats her folio of Christmas cards and thank-you notes from the Bush family and says, "I have all the constitutional knowledge I need right here, thanks."
January 2006: You're-Fired-gate
Associate Justice Harriet Miers circulates an e-mail to her colleagues suggesting that since all Supreme Court law clerks serve at the justices' pleasure, they should be summarily fired so as to create new job possibilities for 36 new clerks. In a follow-up e-mail, she notes that, on second thought, there would be openings for only 35 new clerks under her scheme, as she would really like to keep Jenna.
March 2006: Clerk-gate, Part III
An unsigned per curiam opinion issues from the Supreme Court declaring abortion illegal under all circumstances, overruling Brown v. Board of Education, and striking down the University of Michigan's affirmative action policy. Several of the associate justices express some dismay that these cases were never argued or briefed at the high court and that the alleged opinion was never circulated. Washington Post reporters soon discover that chief justice law clerk Kyle Sampson himself drafted the opinion in concert with the White House. At a subsequent press conference, Gonzales "acknowledges and accepts" personal responsibility for the actions of his law clerks, while clarifying that, because he supervises a massive staff of five people, he had absolutely no idea what Sampson was doing or why. Nevertheless, Chief Justice Gonzales pledges to redouble his efforts to find out why his staff lies to him all the time.
June 2006: Hamdan-gate
In a 5-4 opinion, written by Justice John Paul Stevens, the Supreme Court decides in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that President Bush's military commissions, created to try enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay, are unconstitutional. In a blistering dissent by Chief Justice Alberto Gonzales, the former attorney general repeats his claim that the president's tribunals are legal, his suspension of the Geneva Conventions are legal, his warrantless wiretapping program is legal, his yet-to-be-enacted future detainee-treatment act would be legal; and that, indeed, if the president wanted to water-board any sissy liberal justices who disagree with him, that would be legal as well. The dissent cites one legal document for these various constitutional principles: the OLC torture memo.
October 2006: You're-Fired-gate, Part II:
Justice Harriet Miers, in a series of e-mails to the White House, suggests that since all the Supreme Court cafeteria workers serve at the justices' pleasure, they should all be fired and replaced with members of the Federalist Society. When Chief Justice Alberto Gonzales suggests that this would be "disruptive," clerk Kyle Sampson shoots off an e-mail suggesting that only the cafeteria workers who serve coffee to David Souter or Ruth Bader Ginsburg should be fired, then replaced without "even waiting for their bodies to cool."
October 2006: Obstacle-gate:
Chief Justice Alberto Gonzales, under increasing fire for the actions of his staff, gives a rare interview to Jon Stewart, in which he defends his actions with the claim that he has "overcome great obstacles" in life in order to become the chief justice, and he feels that it behooves him to put as many comparable obstacles as he can in front of others.
November 2006: Throw-Yourself-Under-the-Bus-gate:
Justice Miers, realizing that the many Supreme Court scandals have become impossible to ignore, offers to step down from the court, for the good of the nation. President Bush accepts her resignation, then names her the new director of the FBI, from which position she will shortly resign over the National Security Letters scandal.
GOP strategist Rollins: 'Best for Gonzales to resign' RAW STORY
Published: Friday March 16, 2007
On the March 16 broadcast of CBS News' The Early Show, Republican strategist and former assistant to President Reagan Ed Rollins concedes that U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should resign due to revelations of his involvement in the firing of eight U.S. atorneys.
"It's certainly the President's prerogative but I would argue that he should go," Rollins said of Gonzales. "I think at this point in time they are losing support of Republican Senators by the day and the president desperately needs their support."
When asked what the best way is for the White House to move beyond the scandal, Rollins replied, "The best way is for Gonzales to resign and move on and put someone of great credibility in there."
"The bottom line here is that they can't have the scrutiny -- they can't continue -- they can't be fighting on two fronts. They're fighting on the war front," Rollins added. "They can't be fighting on this front, too."
video
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/CBS_Ed_Rollins_Best_for_Gonzales_0316.html
Probably all of these were mentioned before, just listing 'em:
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif.: "there needs to be a change [..] Maybe the president should have an attorney general who is less a personal friend and more professional in his approach."
Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore.: "For the Justice Department to be effective before the U.S. Senate, it would be helpful" if Gonzales resigned.
Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H.: "If I were the president, I would fire the attorney general".
Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn.: "deeply concerned about how this whole process has been handled."
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa.: "withholding judgment" on Gonzales' future, but said the attorney general's explanations so far had been "unacceptable" and "mystifying."
Source
We will still want to look at who wasn't removed from office.
Joe(Who's the toady?)Nation
Rohrabacher, yikesville. That he would say so makes me wonder about machinating moves up. (Ok, ok, haven't followed him lately.)
I did see the Slate thing on Gonzales and Miers. What a picture, how close we came.
