Leahy Threatens to Take Pieces off the Board

My dad, an unofficial chess master, taught me how to play chess when I was five. We played daily for years, then less frequently as I got older. I didn't beat him until I was in my twenties, and only now am I threat to beat him anytime we play (he still wins way more than I do).

One of the strategies my Dad uses is to mercilessly attack with his pawns. Very similar to Dick Cheney. If Cheney's pieces are going down, they go down in order of rank. Well Bush and Cheney have had a lot of their pawns, both their bishops, a knight and a rook taken off the table.

Patrick Leahy has Bush in check right now and Bush... He's playing checkers.

So the question is, does Leahy have the balls to stand up and insist on finishing the chess game, even if it means sending guards to arrest... who exactly? Fred Fielding? Like Rumsfeld said when we invaded Afghanistan, there are no good targets left. Just the King and the Queen. You decide which is which, I can't tell.

It's Bush's move, and, like a good chess game, the pace is maddeningly slow. Leahy can't even make his next move until after consulting his committee when Congress returns in September. By then, a much larger matter will have the headlines locked down.

VIDEO: Think Progress has the video from Leahy's press conference.

TAGS: Chess, Dick Cheney, Patrick Leahy, Inherent Contempt

Privilege, Schmivilege

Constitutional Crisis Looming Over Prosecutors Case?

All of the top officials in the Department of Justice who were supposed to be responsible for the dismissals of seven US Attorneys have been brought before the Senate Judiciary committee.

All have been asked "who knew?", "Why were they fired?" and "who made up the list?"

All of them have responded, "not me", "I don't remember", and "ask somebody else please." Those who have responded thusly so far include:

• Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
• his (now former) Deputy AG J. Paul McNulty
• his chief of staff Kyle Sampson
• Mc'Nulty's chief of staff Michael Elston
• Monica Goodling, liaison between Gonzales and the White House.
  
• Michael Battle, Director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys

The mere depth of Goodling's involvement raises a number of red flags. Prior to her rise in the DoJ's executive branch, "Ms. Goodling worked alongside Tim Griffin as an opposition researcher for the Republican National Committee during the 2000 presidential campaign." (Wikipedia) There isn't a more partisan position in politics than opposition researcher, and Goodling is a legal featherweight who graduated from the 'fourth tier' Regent College. And yet, for some unexplained reason;

Goodling's authority over hiring [was] expanded significantly in March 2006, when Attorney General Gonzales signed an unpublished order delegating to Goodling and Kyle Sampson, Gonzales's then chief of staff, the power to appoint or dismiss all department political appointees besides United States attorneys (who are appointed by the President.)

But I digress. I just found some of those details about Goodling's career to be especially fascinating, and thought it important to point out that the authority Gonzales secretly vested in her was supposed to be in the office of Michael Battle. One other point of digression. Other than Gonzales, all the DoJ officials on the list above have resigned since the Purge Scandal investigation began. Although they may still be coming to work for all I know. All have exhibited a stunning collective amnesia worthy of the very worst soap opera plotlines, so they probably don't remember their own resignations.

The main point I was trying to get at, and I've made it before, is that there is a consistant denial that anyone at the DoJ was involved in the dismissals - leaving only one logical conclusion. The orders for the dismissals really didn't originate at DoJ, but in the White House. Further, that they were developed not out of any official government business, but from purely partisan Republican political maneuvering. The evidence for this conclusion is overwhelming. We have the testimony of fired US Attorney David Iglesias concerning the improper interference in his duties by Senator Pete Domenici and Congresswoman Heather Wilson. We have the parallel story from Seattle's US Attorney John McKay. We have the dismissal of Bud Cummings in Arkansas to make way for Goodling's old boss Tim Griffin. We have the fact of Griffin's criminal involvement in voter suppression through the drawing up of 'caging lists.' We have the obstruction of justice entailed in the parallel case of the missing emails.

Behind it all we have the 'untouchable' KKKarl Rove, whom all of the above jumped 'under the bus' to protect. This scandal is vastly dirtier, and reaches much further, than the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Milhouse Nixon.

Richard Nixon 'stonewalled' any investigations into his illegal White House excursions by invoking executive privilege. A privilege that the administration of George W. Bush now is invoking, both in the Prosecutors' case, and in the NSA wiretapping scandal. The thing is, executive privilege is NOWHERE MENTIONED IN THE CONSTITUTION. So where the heck did Nixon, and after him Reagan and GW Bush, get the idea?

Presidents have argued that executive privilege is a principle implied in the constitutionally mandated separation of powers. In order to do their job, presidents contend, they need candid advice from their aides — and aides simply won't be willing to give such advice if they know they might be called to testify, under oath, before a congressional committee or in some other forum.

Not surprisingly, there is one crucial word left out of this explanation that is required to have it make any sense. That word is CRIMINAL. The only suppression of the 'candid' advice of aides that requires them to be protected from scrutiny is in a case where what they are advising is illegal and unconstitutional. Or maybe just bonehead stupid. Think about it. If the advice you are giving is good advice, and legal, why would you want to hide it? In my mind, the idea that everything an aide tells the President will eventually become public knowledge would be much more likely to improve the quality of that advice. IOW, it's a bullshit argument.

Anyway, subpoenas have been issued by the Senate seeking documents and testimony from White House officials, and those subpoenas have been ignored. Some in regards to the Prosecutors' Purge scandal, some over the illegal NSA warrantless wiretapping program. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy has vowed he will take Bush to court. In fact, here's the letter Leahy and House Judiciary chairman John Conyers sent to White House Counsel Fred Fielding on Friday, demanding, "the White House 'immediately provide us with the specific bases for your claims regarding each document withheld via a privilege log...and a copy of any explicit determination by the President with respect to the assertion of privilege.' ".

TPM has the letter from Fielding asserting the privilege here. Think Progress has the best piece on the implications of the conflict. In fact, this piece contains one of the juiciest tidbits to come out of this whole affair, and should be read in its entirety.

Fielding attached a legal memorandum written by Solicitor General Paul Clement, laying out the legal basis for the executive privilege claim... In his letter, Clement reveals what investigators have suspected from the very beginning — that the White House was intimately involved in the attorney scandal. Upon examination of the White House documents, Clement writes:

Among other things, these communications discuss the wisdom of such a proposal, specific U.S. Attorneys who could be removed, potential replacement candidates, and possible responses to congressional and media inquiries about the dismissals.

The White House had “said that Mr. Bush’s aides approved the list of prosecutors only after it was compiled.” President Bush himself said that “the Justice Department made recommendations, which the White House accepted” regarding the removal of the attorneys.

If you don't have the time to follow the link to Think Progress, well SHAME ON YOU, but you at least MUST read this excerpt they cite from a Marcy Wheeler article on Clement's conflict of interest in this matter.

Paul Clement, as you’ll recall, is the guy currently in charge of any investigation into the US Attorney firings, since Alberto Gonzales recused himself some months ago...And now, he’s the guy who gets to tell the President that he doesn’t have to turn over what might amount to evidence of obstruction of justice in the Foggo and Wilkes case, among others.

This whole affair sets up what the media always refer to as a Constitutional Crisis, but I don't like that characterization. I think the crisis would be if the congress didn't confront the White House over illegal, even criminal activity.

Bush has been in contempt of Congress since his inauguration in January 2001. Nowhere has that been so prominent than in his assertion of 'unitary executive' powers as delineated (in a series of internal memoranda) by John Yoo, another one-time Department of Justice misfit. Let me make my feelings on the 'Yoo Doctrine' clear. If this theory were ever to be officially announced, that really would be a constitutional crisis, because it is nothing less than an outright declaration of a Bush dictatorship. The thing is, the administration has been acting from day one as if the Yoo doctrine were official.

Anyway, there now seems little possibility that Bu$hCo™ will be able to ignore these subpoenas for very long. Law professor Jonathan Turley lays out the bottom line on Countdown (Video available in yet another excellent article from Think Progress.) And here's what that bottom line entails for the White House.

As Columbia University law professor Michael Dorf points out, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Nixon that, “where the President asserts only a generalized need for confidentiality, [executive privilege] must yield to the interests of the government and defendants in a criminal prosecution.”

And from Turley:

[with respect to the NSA program] -- that was a clearly criminal act that the president called for — that under federal law, it’s a federal crime to do what the president has ordered hundreds of people do. Now, if we’re right, not only did he order that crime, it would in fact be an impeachable offense... They don’t want to recognize that this president may have ordered criminal offenses, but they now may be on the road to do that, because the way Congress can get around the executive privilege in court is to say we are investigating a potential crime.

And Raw Story has some transcript from a different portion of the Countdown piece. And a rather more complete video, in a larger window.

"This administration, I have to say, has a certain contempt for the law," said Turley. "They treat it like some of my criminal defendents used to treat it. ... They come up with any argument that might work. ... It's a sort of shocking development. ... But at the end of the day, they will lose, and they're making the situation worse."

At least for once, they're making the situation worse for themselves, not for everybody else. And I love that phrase, "at the end of the day, they will lose." It sounds like hopeful news for a change, even to my pessimistic ear.

For further reading, Station Agent has this post up at Ice Station, likening the confrontation to a gunfight in the western movie Tombstone.

TAGS: Prosecutors' Purge, NSA Wiretapping, Stonewalling, Constitutional Crisis

Connecting the Dots

Background on Gonzo Testimony

In less than 48 hours Alberto 'Abu' Gonzales will be testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee again. Reports that he has been practicing testimony aside, I can't see him doing any better than he has in the past. Under the stern glare of Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy he will squirm, blink, sweat, cough, and fidget like a truant in front of the high school vice principal. The man has a positive talent for exuding guilt, and Leahy knows exactly how to bring that talent out to the full. Frankly I'll be impressed if he doesn't piss himself - he has a lot of tough questions to answer.
HE IS SO SCREWED!!
This from ABC News:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has an uphill battle in convincing senators he's capable of running the Justice Department after the botched firing of federal prosecutors, two influential Republican senators said Sunday.

Two days before Gonzales is to make a showdown appearance before Congress, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said none of Gonzales' public statements so far has convinced him that the department's ouster of eight U.S. attorneys was justified.

Here's some background to ensure that you fully appreciate the flavor of the upcoming testimony, and some heads-up on recent developments. If nothing else, if you don't like my take on this story you'll have lots of links to pursue. It should also remind you of some elements of the story you may have forgotten. This is a long post, because there is a lot of ground to cover, but I'll try to stay on point.

This story goes back to Dec. 7, 2006 when eight US Attorneys were asked to resign so that they could be replaced with Bu$hCo™ loyalists. The story didn't really get picked up by the media until mid-January, as evidenced by this Olbermann video featuring the ever-incisive Jonathan Turley. Neither Olbermann nor Turley had picked up on what this was really about yet, but my own post on the subject got it even wronger. I thought it was judges, not US Attorneys who had been let go. One crucial element of the story that was evident from the start - the replacements would be picked by a new authority given the President under the USA PATRIOT Act. The provision making this possible was literally snuck into the act by Arlen Specter's top aide in the middle of the night - just after the Nov. 7 elections, and in the waning days of the Republican congressional majority. That stinks, and nobody with a nose failed to notice.

By late February, early March details were beginning to emerge about who had been fired, how it was done, and who the replacements were. Significantly a House Judiciary subcommittee subpoenaed some of the fired attorneys to find out more about the circumstances. Here in point form is some of what we now know, in part due to testimony given under those subpoenas:

• At least some of the dismissed attorneys (all, BTW Republicans and Bush appointees) were FURIOUS that their dismissals were being bandied about as being performance related.
• Carol Lam, the California US Attorney who had convicted GOP Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham was on the point of issuing more subpoenas in that case, directed at, among others, a high ranking CIA official. Also in possible jeopardy if the Cunningham case was pursued were Republican California representatives Duncan Hunter and John Doolittle, both of whom had overt ties to the Brent Wilkes 'earmark clique', as Josh Marshall calls it. Hunter had the nerve to defend Lam's dismissal on the grounds she was too soft on drug cases.
• David Iglesias' story is perhaps the best known. He was the US Attorney in New Mexico who testified that he had been phoned at home by first Republican Representative Heather Wilson, then Republican Senator Pete Domenici. Both inquired whether Iglesias would be pursuing corruption charges against Democratic state officials - and could he please get them filed prior to the Nov. 7 election? When Iglesias answered in the negative, both callers abruptly hung up on him. It was this testimony that gave the story legs, and prompted further investigations into the matter.
• Arkansas US Attorney Bud Cummins was replaced by senior Karl Rove aide Tim Griffin. Griffin's role working for Rove was in finding 'dirt' that could be used against Democratic candidates.
• Daniel Bogden wasn't comfortable about the stated reasons for his own dismissal, and asked an official at the agency's headquarters if the firing was related to his performance or to that of his office. 'That didn't enter into the equation,' he said he was told.
• John McKay was the US Attorney in Seattle who among other things helped to convict the Millenium bomber. "So when the attorney general said McKay was fired for performance reasons, he was livid. 'I knew that was false and I felt obligated to speak up,' ... McKay believes it was what he didn't do that got him fired... A Democratic candidate won Washington state's 2004 gubernatorial race by just a couple of hundred votes. McKay didn't call a grand jury to investigate questions of voter fraud, and he heard about it when he sought a promotion."

With Lam being dismissed on the verge of pursuing charges against Republican officials, and with Iglesias and McKay both testifying that they felt they had been fired for not pursuing charges against Democrats, a clear pattern was emerging that anyone not watching FOX "news" could readily discern. A couple of observers tore themselves away from the Libby conviction to make comments compelling in their logic, and devastating in their implication for Bu$hCo™. We'll give Paul Krugman the first scathe;

"The bigger scandal, however, almost surely involves prosecutors still in office. The Gonzales Eight were fired because they wouldn’t go along with the Bush administration’s politicization of justice. But statistical evidence suggests that many other prosecutors decided to protect their jobs or further their careers by doing what the administration wanted them to do: harass Democrats while turning a blind eye to Republican malfeasance."

Jonathan Turley's observation is equally acute;

"In my opinion, the most important (and alarming) part of the story is where the authority to do this derives from: The USA Patriot Act. How exactly does giving Bush the power to replace inconvenient prosecutors protect us from terror? Oh, wait, it doesn't. It just protects him and his cronies from prosecution. Talk about politicizing terror."

By mid March the pressure was mounting on the Attorney General, and for that matter the entire Department of Justice. Gonzales' chief of staff D. Kyle Sampson announced his resignation on Mar. 12., an obvious target of the next round of subpoenas. It was also around this time that the parallel scandal broke about the FBI's abuse of National Security Letters. In Japan, Gonzales would by this point have been required to spill his guts on the floor - literally. Senator Charles Schumer (D - New York) called for Gonzales' immediate resignation. The New York Times has the money quote (Watch Senator Schumer's statement on Youtube);

Senate Democrats vowed today to get explanations, with or without subpoenas, from high Bush administration officials as revelations about the dismissal of federal prosecutors put renewed pressure on the White House.

“Just when we thought our faith could not be shaken any further, it has been,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “The latest revelations prove beyond any reasonable doubt that there has been unprecedented breach of trust, abuse of power and misuse of the Justice Department.”

On March 13, Gonzales gave this Press Conference (video opens in new window) on the scandal that had become known as the Prosecutor Purge. Herein was introduced the odious phrase, 'at the pleasure of the President.' We would hear those weasel words over and over for the next few weeks. Herein also was introduced the idea that, while he accepted responsibility for everything that went on in the Department of Justice, he wasn't really responsible because he didn't really know what was going on in the DoJ. The old Bu$hCo™ excuse of ignorance. Specifically though, he claimed to be 'out of the loop' on the whole affair. From TPM Muckraker: "He said that his chief of staff Kyle Sampson, now resigned, headed up the process for replacing the U.S. attorneys, and that Gonzales himself was 'not involved in seeing any memos' or 'any discussion of what was going on.' "

Gonzales must hate Fridays the way the rest of the world hates Mondays. Friday is Document Dump Day for the Bush administration, the day when they release information they know to be damaging in order to reduce as far as possible the media attention it will get over the weekend. Friday, March 23 was just such a day, and the docs dumped put the lie to Gonzales' press conference claims from only 11 days earlier.

"The e-mails, delivered to Congress Friday night, show that Gonzales attended an hourlong meeting on the firings on Nov. 27, 2006 - 10 days before seven U.S. attorneys were told to resign. The attorney general's participation in the session calls into question his assertion that he was essentially in the dark about the firings."

Joshua Marshall's comment pretty much says it all, "It is not too much to say that everything that has come out of Alberto Gonzales' mouth on this issue has been a lie. Sure, that sounds like hyperbole. But it's just a factual summary of what the public record now shows." I quoted another part of the same piece in a previous post from that same weekend. "

This isn't a case where Alberto Gonzales has fallen short of the president's standards or bungled some process. This is the standard. The Attorney General has done and is doing precisely what is expected of him... the president is fine with all of this. Fine with the fact that the Attorney General has not only repeatedly lied to the public but has also been exposed as repeatedly lying to the public. He's fine with at least two US Attorneys being fired for not giving in to pressure to file bogus charges to help Republican candidates.

Of course he's fine with it. Because it comes from him. None of this is about Alberto Gonzales. This is about the president and the White House, which is where this entire plan was hatched. Gonzales was just following orders, executing the president's plans. This is about this president and this White House, which ... let's be honest, everyone on both sides of the aisle already knows."

It was about this time that Monica Goodling's name became more prominently attached to the scandal. By the time anybody knew who she was, she had already been subpoenaed by the Judiciary Committee, and announced through her lawyers her intention to avoid self-incrimination by resorting to the Fifth Amendment. Suddenly the administration starts recognizing the existence of the Bill of Rights, a document that they had studiously ignored for their first six years in power.

Well, I'm getting exhausted, so will continue with this tomorrow. We will continue with the story of the missing emails, including several details that have come out in the last few days. I have plenty more links to go through. This past Friday, the 13th. was another Document Dump, which brought out some interesting facts. In the meantime, I leave you with some of my conclusions, which I wrote before starting this timeline.

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In all of this we must hold onto one thought, the ultimate response to the reight wing theme of 'there was nothing improper. US Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President.' That is utter bullshit, and I'll tell you why. It has to do with the Constitutional principle of separation of powers.

The Constitution describes a government that has three independent branches. Once appointed by the President, all US attorneys become part of the Judiciary Branch, and take an oath to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States of America. They are no longer working for the administration, or the President, and they are certainly not working for the Republican party or KKKarl Rove.

Any effort to interfere with judiciary independence through his power of nominating appointees is a usurpation of power by the president. Remember, until this odious aforementioned provision was secretly added to the USA PATRIOT act, these appointments had to be confirmed by the Senate. So right off you have one branch of government (the administration) treading on the turf of the legislative branch. All of this heaped on top of the indignity of Bush's signing statements, and tacitly approved thus far by a complacent complicit Republican majority in both houses. And Bush has used his lack of opposition in the legislative branch to stake out territory in the Judiciary.

It's not just about these eight US Attorneys, nor even about the 85 who were compliant enough to retain their positions. It goes much higher up. To the degree that someone like Alberto Gonzales himself, or one of the Supreme Court Justices appointed by either Bush or his father perceives his loyalty as to the President personally, or to the Republican party rather than to the Constitution, the doctrine of separation of powers goes out the window. Once gone, it will be nigh unto impossible to retrieve this vital principle. It was put there for a reason.

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands may justly be pronounced the very definition of a tyranny."
-- James Madison --

UPDATE: I've finished the second and last part of my timeline - A Picture Emerges
(The result of connecting those dots)

TAGS: Prosecutor Purge, Alberto Gonzales, Separation of Powers, Constitutional Law

New Rule

Sometimes Partisanship is OK

Here's my new rule, and I especially mean this to apply to the dismissed prosecutors case that is sure to dominate the news this week, and may lead (if there's even a vestige of justice left in the world WILL lead) to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto 'Abu' Gonzales. - The Repuglicans don't get to use the word 'partisan' in any of its forms to describe Democrats any more. And I'll tell you why.

Democracy cannot function without partisanship. In order to have a choice, the electorate MUST have at least two, and preferably more options to chose from. Therefore it is not only appropriate but desirable and even essential that a political party present its policies in a clear and distinct voice, ESPECIALLY when those policies differ from the opposition. For the last few years, it is exactly this type of 'partisanship' that the Republicans have been criticizing the Democratic party of at every possible opportunity. The portable public chorus of the mainstream media has seen no reason to object to this totally unworthy ploy.

There is a kind of partisanship that is completely unacceptable, in many countries criminal, and that type of partisanship can only really be carried out by the party in power. That is partisanship from within the government apparatus. Even though an appointment to the civil service may be a political reward, once in office, the appointee has an obligation to serve not only the party and/or individual who appointed him or her, but the whole country.

In Canada, I daresay we have as many political appointees serving in government as you do in the US. There are a couple of differences though. First, there are fewer, short-term patronage appointments of the type that seem to beg for an increase in the index of corruption. Most civil servants in Canada are long-term professional bureaucrats. They are sworn to be apolitical, and the vast majority do an admirable job of maintaining an arms length relationship with the government currently in power. One could hardly avoid the mention of Canada's Auditor General, Sheila Fraser in this context. A Liberal appointee, she nonetheless led to that party's ouster from government when she uncovered the federal sponsorship scandal - a scandal which centered on some other Liberal appointees who illegally used government resources and money to further an agenda that was not aimed at the good of the country, but at the success of the Liberal party. This scandal and the way it played out does our system of government proud, in my opinion.

The outing of Valerie Plame is an example of unacceptable partisanship. The removal of perfectly good federal prosecutors for not abusing their positions to further a Republican agenda is another good example. Contracts to Halliburton, Diebold, ES&S, The Carlyle Group, Blackwater, etc., etc., etc., are all examples of partisanship corrupting government in an unacceptable and harmful way. A way that threatens democracy itself.

Not surprisingly, the issue of partisanship and the strange use of that word by the Republican party and their media parrots came up today in this New York Times article about Patrick Leahy demanding answers from the White House. While this whole story is redolent with bullshit as it is, one statement from Senator John Cornyn (R - Texas) has a fetid pungency acrid enough to overwhelm the general stink.

None of the Republicans who took to the airwaves on Sunday offered a spirited defense of the administration, but Mr. Cornyn and others did take exception to the Democratic vow to subpoena White House officials and accused some Democrats of trying to turn the issue to their political advantage.

“I’ll join Senator Leahy in getting to the facts and following the facts where they may lead,” Mr. Cornyn said. But he accused some Democrats of crossing a line “into basically a political witch hunt,” citing the role of Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, as head of the subcommittee running the investigation into the dismissals of the prosecutors.

Yes, Mr. Cornyn, if the Democrats reap a political advantage by exposing Republican corruption, that is not partisanship - it is just the Democrats fulfilling their obligation of governmental oversight. An obligation, by the way, that has not been carried out by the Republicans in the Senate or House of Representatives for over six years now. Any political advantage accrued by the Democrats is an advantage your party handed to them.

Corruption within government and covering up for corruption are partisan acts, Senator. Exposing corruption is not. Got it?

TAGS: Dismissed Prosecutors, Patrick Leahy, Partisanship, John Cornyn

Assault on Justice

Knowing full well that they face defeat in court cases covering issues ranging from public corruption to the NSA wiretapping program and the denial of habeas corpus in hundreds of cases, the Bush administration has turned to a new and disturbing tactic. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is dismissing federal judges and replacing them with judges who he expects will make decisions based on political affiliation rather than legal merit.

From the Washington Post,

"[Gonzales] denied any political motives and vowed to quickly submit new nominees for the jobs to the Senate for confirmation.

'What we're trying to do is ensure that for the people in each of these respective districts, we have the very best possible representative for the Department of Justice,' Gonzales testified, adding later: 'I would never, ever make a change in a United States attorney for political reasons or if it would in any way jeopardize an ongoing serious investigation. I just would not do it.'

Gonzales's remarks in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee came in response to questions from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and other lawmakers about the forced removals of at least six U.S. attorneys, including several who have overseen some of the government's highest-profile corruption prosecutions."

Consider one of the judges who is on the way out; "Carol C. Lam in San Diego, who led the corruption prosecution of former congressman Randy 'Duke' Cunningham (R-Calif.)" On the way in is Tim Griffin, who was recently working for the RNC trying to dig up dirt on Democratic candidates. Despite Gonzo's protests otherwise, that looks political to me.
Senator Feinstein seems to agree.

Diane Feinstein Adresses the Senate

Here's Olbermann with Jonathan Turley's reaction:

Assault on Justice

Turley gets right to the point when he remarks that Gonzo is 'more General than Attorney...he seems just inherently hostile towards the rule of law.' Which when you think of it is just what you want if you're trying to set up a police state. This seems to be something they've been planning for some time, too. Under a little known provision added into the USA PATRIOT Act when it was renewed*, the judges no longer require congressional confirmation.

Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy, titles his post on this subject simply, with an infamous Bush quote, "This would be a whole lot easier if this was a dictatorship…just as long as I’m the dictator!" - This move seems designed to put Bush one step closer to that goal.

UPDATE: (3 am, Jan. 21) While researching for this post, I bookmarked this article concerning Arlen Specter's role in the last-minute change to the legislation that negated the Senate's participation in confirming judges. Sorry I neglected to include the link in the original post.

UPDATE: (Apr. 15) While researching for another post, I reread this one to find my egregious error of identifying the dismissed US Attorneys as Federal Judges. My sincere apologies. It looks like I put this one together when it was late, and I was tired.

TAGS: Justice, Alberto Gonzales, Police State, Putsch

Gonzales Caves In

Democratic Majority Begins to Bear Fruit

The first of what we hope to be many Senate hearings into administration malfeasance has had new Justice committee chairman Patrick Leahy questioning Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on the matter of the NSA wiretapping program. The program was declared to be unconstitutional and even criminal by Federal Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor way back in August. There are a couple of articles at Glenn Greenwald's site here and here for those who wish to be brought up to date on the issue.

In a letter to Leahy and ranking minority [insert taunt here] committee member Arlen "The Enabler" Specter, Gonzales claims that the program will now operate under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC.) This of course was always legally required, both constitutionally in accordance with the fourth amendment and statutorily to comply with the FISA law set up after the wiretapping abuses of the Nixon administration. Greenwald, who is the acknowledged expert on this matter, was not impressed by Gonzales' reluctant and belated performance of his clear duty as Attorney General.

"[U]ltimately, there are only two options -- (1) the administration is now complying fully and exclusively with FISA when eavesdropping, in which case all of its prior claims that it could not do so and still fight against The Terrorists are false, or (2) the administration has changed its eavesdropping program some, but it is still not fully complying with FISA, in which case nothing of significance has changed (at least on the lawbreaking issues) because the administration is still violating the law."

Let me rephrase that. The administration is pretending that it will now comply with FISA and the constitution because something has changed. Which frankly is a load of crap. The only thing that has changed is the political landscape, where the word oversight now actually means oversight, not overlook. There is not now, nor has there ever been, a legal ruling that allows wiretapping without a warrant being issued.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
-- Amendment IV, The Constitution of The United States of America

I can hardly wait until Leahy questions Gonzales on what I think are much more pressing issues in Justice's bailiwick: Suspension of habeas corpus under the Military Commissions Act; Incarceration and imprisonment without charges at Guantanamo Bay; Torture; Signing Statements; The theory of unitary executive presidential powers, to name a few. Gonzales needs to be reminded that he swore an oath to uphold the law, not to support his long-time friend George Bush in his newly carved-out dictatorship.

There are few people in the Bush administration who are worse than the Chimperor himself. For his complicity in the kidnapping, torture and deaths of innocent detainees, Gonzales makes it onto that short list.

---

UPDATE (3 pm., 01/18): Here's a snippet from the New York Times article on this.

"Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales is expected to face hostile questioning on Thursday from the Senate Judiciary Committee on the program. And an appellate court in Cincinnati is scheduled to hear arguments in two weeks on the government’s appeal of an earlier ruling declaring the program illegal and unconstitutional.

Some legal analysts said the administration’s pre-emptive move could effectively make the court review moot, but Democrats and civil rights advocates said they would press for the courts and Congress to continue their scrutiny of the program of wiretapping without warrants, which began shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001."

How could this make the standing decision moot? The judge in this case had already determined that there was a prima facie case to pursue CRIMINAL charges against the administration, whatever NSA and CIA operatives that were involved, and even non-governmental agencies like AT&T that may have co-operated. This is like a thief who was already facing charges of holding up several liquor stores being let go because he has promised not to do it anymore. Every criminal in America should be asking their lawyer to pursue that option now that the precedent has been set.

TAGS: Justice Committee, Patrick Leahy
Abu Gonzales, War Criminal

Kudos Patrick Leahy

- "Has Actually Read the Constitution."
- Is Working to Restore Habeas Corpus

Here's an interesting tidbit. Due to the Democratic takeover of the Senate, Patrick Leahy (D - VT) will take the chair of the key Senate Judiciary Committee.

"Leahy of late has had a fire in his belly, the likes of which we haven't seen in a while. His sadness at the loss of comity and the discarding of basic Constitutional values under the Bush GOP has turned into outrage, and he has been consistently riveting in front of a crowd in recent months.

At a recent post-election party - "He related a conversation where he was recently asked if President Bush should be worried that he was now to be Chair of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee. The crowd started cheering.

'No, no' he said, calming the crowd, as if to be prepared for a softening of his rhetoric.

'No, he shouldn't be worried. He should be terrified.' "



Leahy went on to assure the crowd that, unlike "some in the administration," he'd "actually read the Constitution," and went on to promise that no judges nominated to the federal bench who would ignore that Constitution would ever get past his committee. (from the Green Mountain Daily)

That's not all folks. On Tuesday Leahy and outgoing Judiciary Committee Chair Arlen Specter introduced the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act (Statement in Congressional Record). While this falls far short of the more desirable goal of overturning the Military Commissions Act (aka War Criminals' Protection Act, aka Torture Bill) it's a welcome start. So Leahy gets my early nomination for Person of the Moment. Ahh, and sure it's a great day to be Irish!

Glenn Greenwald has a post today which discusses the Restoration Act's chances of overcoming a Repuglycan filibuster (slim) let alone receiving a veto-proof endorsement in the Senate (slim to none.) Glenn is slightly more optimistic to the idea of the provision of suspension being struck down by the Supreme Court on Constitutional grounds. Like anyone who can read can see that it clearly contradicts Article I, section 9.
Even if the Leahy/Specter bill had no chance of becoming law, it's worth doing for political reasons. Every Repug Senator that votes against it is forced to go on the record as OPPOSING AMERICAN VALUES in the most egregious manner. There are a lot of Republicans whose terms are up in '08. And if the bill overcomes a filibuster, Glenn points out, "even forcing a presidential veto by overcoming a filibuster would be worthwhile on many levels. (it would be remarkably illustrative if the only two measures over the course of six years which moved the President to exercise his veto power were a bill to provide for stem cell research and another to protect the 900-year-old writ of habeas corpus)" Shrub the Younger's historical legacy is already bruised and battered. Such an action would turn it into the putrifying corpse that it truly deserves to be.

TAGS: Habeas Corpus, Patrick Leahy, Bill of Rights, Justice,
Glenn Greenwald