Got Memory? Senators Question U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Though His Answers Are Pretty Equivocal

OK, which of you could/was quite at utterly incredulous about the testimony of the U.S. Attorney General Alberto "Fredo" Gonzales today. The whole damned thing was damned pitifully worm-lame, from the 74+ times he suggested HE couldn't quite recall or quote or do much as else.

Mr. Gonzales has no big fans among even the Republicans, one of whom suggested he either resign or re-acquaint himselfith rules and ethics OR "go homr to spend more time with his obligatory family.

The Times Attacks Bush's "No Under Oath Testimony on GonzalesGate" As "Nasty and Bumbling"

I can hardly disagree. And what about this Nixonian 18-day gap in emails?

In nasty and bumbling comments made at the White House yesterday, President Bush declared that “people just need to hear the truth” about the firing of eight United States attorneys. That’s right. Unfortunately, the deal Mr. Bush offered Congress to make White House officials available for “interviews” did not come close to meeting that standard.

Mr. Bush’s proposal was a formula for hiding the truth, and for protecting the president and his staff from a legitimate inquiry by Congress. Mr. Bush’s idea of openness involved sending White House officials to Congress to answer questions in private, without taking any oath, making a transcript or allowing any follow-up appearances. The people, in other words, would be kept in the dark.

The Democratic leaders were right to reject the offer, despite Mr. Bush’s threat to turn this dispute into a full-blown constitutional confrontation.

Guess When Gonzalez Goes Bye-Bye And Win A Year of Free Ice Cream!

Hey, who (except me, who doesn't like ice cream) would pass up an offer of free (I would assume, the quite premium Ben & Jerry's) ice cream for a whole year?

True Majority, a progressive organization started by Ben & Jerry's founder, Ben Cohen, has initiated a contest that amounts to something of a pool:

The person who correctly guesses WHEN (not if) U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez becomes Gone-Gone-Gonzalez gets that ice cream deal.

Click here to play!

Now this would make for a very sweeeeet ending to GonzalezGate. Sadly, however, the corruption will continue long after the lackluster, bootlicking Gonzalez Goes-Goes-Gone because Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rice, etc will still remain in power.

Why GonzalezGate/Purging of U.S. Attorneys Matters To Us All

While more Americans are beginning to pay attention to the case of several federal prosecutors with the (In)Justice Department being hand-picked by the Bushies to be fired simply because key people in the White House (namely, Bush, Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, and then presidential attorney-turned-U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzalez) did not feel these prosecutors would "tow" the Republican/Bushie line, I believe the mainstream media is doing a piss poor job of explaining just WHY Americans should care.

True, this is another incidence of great corruption and abuse of power. Sadly, however, and particularly with the Bush Administration, these scandals come faster than your next fast food order.

However, here's what I believe to be the core issue here:

First, yes, the appointment of the U.S. attorneys for 93 different regions that serve under the one U.S. Attorney General is indeed a political appointment. This means they serve at "the will" of the president. However, it is very rare to see these federal prosecutors targeted for removal DURING an administration. Normally, the changeover occurs at the beginning of an administration.

BUT - and here's the core issue - while the federal prosecutors are politically appointed, they are SUPPOSED to operate separately from politics. In other words, they may be there at "the pleasure of the President", but they are supposed to apply the law and conduct investigations fairly, and in a non-partisan matter.

While the Bushies like to say the so-called GonzalezGate is nothing more than any other president does, this is simply NOT true. Aside from Bushie urban legend, there has NEVER been a time - not even on Nixon's watch and you'll recall he FIRED a special prosecutor to try to stop an investigation into his and the GOP's corrupt electoral practices - when a sitting president so far into a two-year-term has decided, "OK, this prosecutor isn't Republican enough" or "this prosecutor won't go after this innocent person just because WE don't like that person."

That's the critical point; what the Bushies sought to do here is make it MUCH easier for the feds to go after ANY ONE OF US purely on partisan palaver. Write something the government doesn't like, get hauled into court. Do something they don't like and WHAM, there you go into federal court.

If we allow the White House and the (In)Justice Department to get away with these actions, we are basically saying, "OK, the political witch hunts can go full tilt."

I don't want that. Do you?

Cartoonists Get It!

This great cartoon on the U.S. attorney firings, complete with Karl Rove and Bush, by Mike Luckavich, just arrived in email from the Center for American Progress.

Replace AG Alberto Gonzalez with Federal PlameGate Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald

Steve at The Carpetbagger Report brings us this, by way of WaPo:

a crazy thought: replacing Alberto Gonzales with Patrick Fitzgerald. The WaPo’s Andrew Cohen writes, “Can you think of a better candidate to restore honor and integrity to the Justice Department than the man who just took on the White House, and won, with the perjury and obstruction trial of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby? Can you think of a person more likely to erase the standing charge of cronyism that seeps through the current administration like a stink bomb?” (thanks to B.P. for the tip)

It's a thought, sure.

Only two major points bother me about the idea. First and foremost, I felt like Fitzgerald kept the investigation and the resulting indictments and later prosecution pretty limited when it's clear that the corruption related to the leak of the name of CIA covert operative Valerie Plame as political payback to her husband, Joe Wilson. Why was Karl Rove not called to account when his name appeared all over the damned place, for example.

Second, he was a major prosecutor in a region that seemed to be caring and feeding - and not prosecuting - one of the assassins of Sadat who also factored into 9-11 and more. Granted, it was the CIA who let this guy in, but Fitzgerald and his then-colleague Rudy Giuliani (ah, there's a name) may have been really cozy with this fellow.

Still, I wouldn't exactly jump in front of a train racing to shed Gone-Gone-Gonzalez and substitute Patrick Fitzgerald in his place.

Videotape Proof of Attorney General Gonzalez Flat Out Lying To Congress

And the White House scoffs of Senator Patrick Leahy's insistence that the Senate Judiciary Committee will subpoena and force these Bushies to testify under oath (not that an oath and a pledge to God not to lie will ever stop the Bushies from lying):

As ThinkProgress noted earlier this week, on Jan. 18, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee, under oath, that the Bush administration never intended to take advantage of a Patriot Act provision that allows the President to appoint “interim” U.S. attorneys for an indefinite period of time, without Senate confirmation.

I am fully committed, as the administration’s fully committed, to ensure that, with respect to every United States attorney position in this country, we will have a presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed United States attorney.

The Washington Post published a front-page story yesterday on these remarks. ThinkProgress has located video of Gonzales apparently lying to Congress.

You can watch the video of the AG's lies under oath (caught on tape) ... er.. testimony at Think Progress.

Gee, a Bush Administration bigwig lying. That NEVER happens (more than 100 times an hour).

Bush's Personal Goon Squad

As raised here, in Paul Krugman's op/ed in The Times on Monday, and throughout hundreds if not thousands of blog entries around the blogosphere, virtually no one is surprised by the revelations that Bush and his henchhog, Karl Rove, have basically used U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the entire (In)Justice Department as their personal goon squad: wiping out any federal prosecutor who would not bend to their will, who refused to "invent" indictments against Democrats (not that Dems don't engage in bad behavior, mind you, but it's clear the Bushies and Republicans were willing to resort to fiction here) or continued - damn them! - to investigate the many abuses by Republicans who took their Congressional majority as a license to loot and plunder and rape American laws, American taxpayers, and whoever else they could.

But we need not only to look long and hard at what the Bushies did with these fired federal prosecutors - and what Scooter Libby and his pals did to CIA covert operative Valerie Plame - but also beyond to the many other means and agencies have been called upon to serve the dark masters of the Bush Administration. Agencies like the IRS (whose mandate to go after ever smaller taxpayers often means creating fear in such taxpayers to speak out) and others. I suspect we'd be bowled-over by what they find even if they just rub a tiny bit at the surface. After all, the Bushies have been so certain of their "mandate" that they rarely have bothered to hide their tracks well, since they felt assured they were in control of those who would investigate.

Neat trick.

Paul Krugman: "Overblown Personnel Matters"

Paul Krugman - if you'll excuse the phrase (and note, I should get 10 cents royalty fee anytime anyone uses the phrase "cut to the chase - ha!) - cuts to the chase on the issue of the fired U.S. attorneys general, Karl Rove and the White House's fingerprints all over running Alberto Gonzalez' Justice Department like it was Bush's own personal goon squad* (see next post), the investigations into GOP lawmaker corruption and voting fraud the firing of the federal prosecutors was done to squelch, and much, much more.

Read it all at Rozius Unbound or satisfy yourself with this hearty byte:

Nobody is surprised to learn that the Justice Department was lying when it claimed that recently fired federal prosecutors were dismissed for poor performance. Nor is anyone surprised to learn that White House political operatives were pulling the strings.

What is surprising is how fast the truth is emerging about what Alberto Gonzales, the attorney general, dismissed just five days ago as an “overblown personnel matter.”

Sources told Newsweek that the list of prosecutors to be fired was drawn up by Mr. Gonzales’s chief of staff, “with input from the White House.” And Allen Weh, the chairman of the New Mexico Republican Party, told McClatchy News that he twice sought Karl Rove’s help — the first time via a liaison, the second time in person — in getting David Iglesias, the state’s U.S. attorney, fired for failing to indict Democrats. “He’s gone,” he claims Mr. Rove said.

After that story hit the wires, Mr. Weh claimed that his conversation with Mr. Rove took place after the decision to fire Mr. Iglesias had already been taken. Even if that’s true, Mr. Rove should have told Mr. Weh that political interference in matters of justice is out of bounds; Mr. Weh’s account of what he said sounds instead like the swaggering of a two-bit thug.

And the thuggishness seems to have gone beyond firing prosecutors who didn’t deliver the goods for the G.O.P. One of the fired prosecutors was — as he saw it — threatened with retaliation by a senior Justice Department official if he discussed his dismissal in public. Another was rejected for a federal judgeship after administration officials, including then-White House counsel Harriet Miers, informed him that he had “mishandled” the 2004 governor’s race in Washington, won by a Democrat, by failing to pursue vote-fraud charges.

As I said, none of this is surprising. The Bush administration has been purging, politicizing and de-professionalizing federal agencies since the day it came to power. But in the past it was able to do its business with impunity; this time Democrats have subpoena power, and the old slime-and-defend strategy isn’t working.

You also have to wonder whether new signs that Mr. Gonzales and other administration officials are willing to cooperate with Congress reflect the verdict in the Libby trial. It probably comes as a shock to realize that even Republicans can face jail time for lying under oath.

Still, a lot of loose ends have yet to be pulled. We now know exactly why Mr. Iglesias was fired, but still have to speculate about some of the other cases — in particular, that of Carol Lam, the U.S. attorney for Southern California.

Ms. Lam had already successfully prosecuted Representative Randy Cunningham, a Republican. Just two days before leaving office she got a grand jury to indict Brent Wilkes, a defense contractor, and Kyle (Dusty) Foggo, the former third-ranking official at the C.I.A. (Mr. Foggo was brought in just after the 2004 election, when, reports said, the administration was trying to purge the C.I.A. of liberals.) And she was investigating Jerry Lewis, Republican of California, the former head of the House Appropriations Committee.

Was Ms. Lam dumped to protect corrupt Republicans? The administration says no, a denial that, in light of past experience, is worth precisely nothing. But how do Congressional investigators plan to get to the bottom of this story?

...In other words, the truth about that “overblown personnel matter” has only begun to be told. The good news is that for the first time in six years, it’s possible to hope that all the facts about a Bush administration scandal will come out in Congressional hearings — or, if necessary, in the impeachment trial of Alberto Gonzales.

The rest is here.

Paul Krugman: Department of Injustice

Finally, someone else - and someone paid far more handsomely than yours rudely - is called the DoJ by its more appropriate nickname: the Injustice Department. Here's your twice-weekly dose of Paul Krugman, of which you can read the big snip here or go there to read it all.

For those of us living in the Garden State, the growing scandal over the firing of federal prosecutors immediately brought to mind the subpoenas that Chris Christie, the former Bush “Pioneer” who is now the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, issued two months before the 2006 election — and the way news of the subpoenas was quickly leaked to local news media.

The subpoenas were issued in connection with allegations of corruption on the part of Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat who seemed to be facing a close race at the time. Those allegations appeared, on their face, to be convoluted and unconvincing, and Mr. Menendez claimed that both the investigation and the leaks were politically motivated.

Mr. Christie’s actions might have been all aboveboard. But given what we’ve learned about the pressure placed on federal prosecutors to pursue dubious investigations of Democrats, Mr. Menendez’s claims of persecution now seem quite plausible.

In fact, it’s becoming clear that the politicization of the Justice Department was a key component of the Bush administration’s attempt to create a permanent Republican lock on power. Bear in mind that if Mr. Menendez had lost, the G.O.P. would still control the Senate.

For now, the nation’s focus is on the eight federal prosecutors fired by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. In January, Mr. Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee, under oath, that he “would never, ever make a change in a United States attorney for political reasons.” But it’s already clear that he did indeed dismiss all eight prosecutors for political reasons — some because they wouldn’t use their offices to provide electoral help to the G.O.P., and the others probably because they refused to soft-pedal investigations of corrupt Republicans.

In the last few days we’ve also learned that Republican members of Congress called prosecutors to pressure them on politically charged cases, even though doing so seems unethical and possibly illegal.

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.

Donald Shields and John Cragan, two professors of communication, have compiled a database of investigations and/or indictments of candidates and elected officials by U.S. attorneys since the Bush administration came to power. Of the 375 cases they identified, 10 involved independents, 67 involved Republicans, and 298 involved Democrats. The main source of this partisan tilt was a huge disparity in investigations of local politicians, in which Democrats were seven times as likely as Republicans to face Justice Department scrutiny.

How can this have been happening without a national uproar? The authors explain: “We believe that this tremendous disparity is politically motivated and it occurs because the local (non-statewide and non-Congressional) investigations occur under the radar of a diligent national press. Each instance is treated by a local beat reporter as an isolated case that is only of local interest.”

And let’s not forget that Karl Rove’s candidates have a history of benefiting from conveniently timed federal investigations. Last year Molly Ivins reminded her readers of a curious pattern during Mr. Rove’s time in Texas: “In election years, there always seemed to be an F.B.I. investigation of some sitting Democrat either announced or leaked to the press. After the election was over, the allegations often vanished.”

Find the rest here.

[Psssst: Krugman shows his courage yet again; he basically admits he lives in New Jersey. Now there's brutal honesty.]