Did You Miss The Unskilled, Unimpressive, And Certainly Skanky Monica Goodling?

Well, if you want to keep up on the latest in GonzoGate, read here. Nancy Pelosi's office blog offers video highlights.

For latecomers, GonzalesGate is the seemingly well-documented allegation that the White House forced the U.S. Department of Justice, through the corrupt actions of Karl Rove and Bush and the incompetency of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (Bush's personal attorney and not exactly Bobby Kennedy kind of material), to morph into a situation where the nation's top cops and prosecutors into a taxpayer-financed GOP hit squad.

Pretty Please?

[Could someone please bring back the nicer Monica? The one who wanted to get screwed by a president (heretofore known as a Lewinsky), rather than the one wanting to screw with every damned one of the rest of us who aren't to the far right (Badthing... er... Goodling)? Pretty please?]

Turning The Face Of American Justice Into A Partisan Clown Parade

Anyone who watched (or read the transcript from) today's "testimony" (what Washington calls what any of us would call a bullshit session) from former Dept of Justice White House liaison Monica Goodling, who cried "5th Amendment" (and damn, I'm not sure DoJ honchos RATE that right given how they hold our lives in their filthy talons) then ran and hid, only coming out under "limited immunity", should be far more than infuriated. [bhfrik did a good piece on this here.]

What U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the White House, particularly Karl Rove and George Bush, have done is turn the highest level of justice of our nation into no less than criminal and leans heavily toward treasonous. For if the American people cannot believe in the possibility their duly elected government will behave responsibly, then we won't be much beyond where we said the Iraqi people were under Saddam Hussein.

In this case, there was no one simple infraction. We have a huge staff hired with a heavy tilt toward a law school which is considered among the worst possible in the nation (where the fundamentalist fascist form of Christianity is what they teach rather than law), that staff administered by people with no competency and then used exclusively to suppress investigations into corrupt Republicans (lawmakers, election fraud, lobbyist payoffs, et al) while forcing investigations (even when their own people reviewed the facts and found no reason to proceed with cases) of Democrats and Democrat supporters.

If we let this slide, we say, "Fine. Turn the DoJ into another wing of the extreme fascist right. It's just dandy with me if they decide to toss up a charge on me with nothing but partisan hate to back up their claims, prosecute me, and then give me the only right of ultimate appeal being the now completely partisan Supreme Court which Bush and Rove and Cheney already rigged."

Personally, I'm not willing to say that. You? [Scary part is how many Americans are far more concerned tonight with who won American Idiot... Idol.]

"Bush's Monica Problem"

Ironic, no, that another Monica has cropped up with another president; the so-called "adult" president who claimed he would bring back the moral rectitude of the White House after the Clinton years. Ah, but this is no blowjob between consenting adults now, is it?

Before I quote from Dan Froomkin's column today on this Monica, let me note that I've heard from a LOT of people in the last 24 hours since the announcement that Al Gonzales' liaison to the White House from the Department of (In)Justice would plead the 5th; all say that this for them means this Justice Dept and White House are dirty as hell. And let me add that most of these same folks were hardly convinced before that the purging of the U.S. Attorneys/federal prosecutors fell into a gray area for them, where they were not certain actual wrong had been done.

Now to Froomkin:

Will another presidency be tripped up by another Monica?

As suspicions about the White House role in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year continue to deepen, one of the people who could shed light on what happened -- Monica Goodling, the Justice Department's White House liaison -- has suddenly decided to clam up, invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Juries in criminal cases are sternly lectured not to assume guilt when a defendant takes the Fifth. It is, after all, a Constitutional right.

But when a fairly minor player in what had heretofore not been considered a criminal investigation suddenly admits that she faces legal jeopardy if she tells the truth to a Congressional panel? Well, in that case, wild speculation is an inevitable and appropriate reaction.

For one, it's not at all clear what she's trying to say. Undeniably, if she chose to lie to the panel, she could face perjury charges. Her recourse, therefore, would appear to be to tell the truth.

So is she saying that if she told the truth, she would have to admit a crime? What crime?

Or is she saying something else: That she'd have to admit someone else's criminal behavior? Well, that's not something you can take the Fifth to avoid. Sorry.

Or is she just afraid of being grilled by an antagonistic bunch of congressmen? Well, that's not something you can take the Fifth to avoid either.

In my column yesterday, I wrote that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is almost certainly still getting his marching orders directly from the West Wing. I speculated about which Justice and/or White House aides were charged with delivering those orders. It's widely known that the White House has in many cases turned over the micromanagement of Cabinet officials to untested youngsters whose paramount qualification is that they follow orders.

Bush Boy may be going dow-dow-down-downnnnnn on this.