[zhenya]

Originally Posted by Ninong

Which brings up a great idea: How about nominating Patrick Fitzgerald as the new Attorney General.

Hmmm, that would be something, wouldn't it? I think if we all take odds on either that could happen none of us would win anything...

[schrocat]

Pat F...????!!

BWAHAHAHA

Dear God man! It would end with a frog marching conga line ala Sergeant York.

"There I was. N'ly one seer'pena left in my trusty document bag...and in front of me, winding down Penn. Ave as fer as the eye could see...
Republicans."

[Ninong]

I think Patrick Fitzgerald would be an excellent choice. He's a conservative Republican who has not been touched by scandal, not even domestic scandal. Unlike many other high profile Republicans, he hasn't been married three times. In fact, he's never been married. He's married to his job.

He's certainly qualified and in a very prestigious USA position -- Northern Illinois. He has a record for going after crooked politicians from both parties. He has more experience than Judge Gonzo had when Bush named him to be AG. Alberto's main claim to fame was that he was Bush's personal lawyer who kept him out of trouble, which is how he ended up getting appointed to the Texas Supreme Court. Gonzales has no prosecutorial experience.

I guess they could always resurrect Harriet Miers, the "most qualified person in the country" at the time to be a Supreme Court Justice.

[Ninong]

U.S. Attorney Candidate Can't Practice Law

Former Republican congressman Rick White, one of three candidates the Republicans have submitted to replace John McKay as U.S. attorney for Western Washington, cannot practice law in the state.

White's license was suspended by the state Supreme Court in August 2003 for failure to pay his bar dues. He was reinstated to the bar in 2005 after paying a small fee, but currently holds an "inactive" status.

White said late Friday that he was working toward reactivating his status as an attorney in the state of Washington. He said he needs to complete about "20 to 30 hours" of Continuing Legal Education (CLE) before he can reclaim his license.

"I understand I'm in a bad position," he said.

[Ninong]

I was glancing though Phony Tony's Friday press briefing and I was struck by this response when asked whether Bush would fire Alberto Gonzales: "I know of no such plan." Hmmm... Nothing about the President having full confidence in his Attorney General.

This is even worse than what was said in defense of Donald Rumsfeld just days before he was fired. In that case, Bush admitted that he lied to reporters because he didn't want to tip his hand in advance. When Republicans learned that the decision had already been taken to fire Rumsfeld immediately after the November elections, they were furious. Many of them believed that if Rumsfeld had been fired a week or two before the elections, they might have held onto the Senate. They were dismayed to learn that Bush was already interviewing Rumsfeld's replacement the weekend before the November 7 elections.

[Ninong]

The Bush Administration was supposed to release another document dump Friday evening -- more internal emails and other correspondence that reportedly implicates Karl Rove even more deeply than has already been disclosed in the U.S. Attorney firings -- but it was postponed until Monday (tomorrow). Could it be that they didn't want the press to have the whole weekend to pour over the new emails before whatever action is planned for next week?

We know that Gonzales is supposed to appear before Congress again next week to explain his previous testimony. Will he or will he resign first? If he resigns, will he be the only one in the Department of Justice to resign? What about Paul McNulty? Will he resign then or wait until after a new AG has been installed?

Will Karl Rove testify or will the White House claim executive privilege? I can't imagine the White House allowing Karl Rove to go under oath for any reason. The Democrats would crucify him! There is nothing to prevent a congressman from asking off-topic questions if the chairman of the committee allows it. After the White House announces that Karl Rove will not be allowed to testify, will the Democrats take it to the Supreme Court?

The good news for the White House is that not many people are talking about Scooter Libby right now. The Scooter Libby conviction was buried by the news that we were mistreating our wounded veterans. Then that story was buried by the news that the Attorney General had lied in his previous congressional testimony about the firings of eight U.S. Attorneys.

First the White House said that the firings had absolutely nothing to do with political considerations. Nothing whatsoever. The fired U.S. Attorneys were all fired because of lousy job performance. This pissed off the fired attorneys who let it be known that they would be more than pleased if the Congress would subpoena them and force them to tell what they knew. That was a riot! The guy in Arkansas was told outright that they wanted him to step down so that they could give the job to Karl Rove's young assistant. No problem! At least they told him the truth and he went willingly.

Most of the other fired U.S. Attorneys were not told directly why they were being asked to step down. Those who were given an explanation were lied to. And none of them was ever told beforehand that there was a problem with their job performance. Most of them had received outstanding performance ratings.

Phony Tony first said that all of the fired U.S. Attorneys were let go because of lousy job performance. One of them wasn't prosecuting enough pornography cases and another wasn't catching enough illegal aliens because she was spending too much time going after Randy "Duke" Cunningham and the people who bribed him.

Now Tony says the firings were NOT related to job performance but rather they were all asked to resign because they "serve at the pleasure of the President." Oh, and let's not forget, Bill Clinton did it, too! Of course he did. And so did George Bush! But they did it at the beginning of their first terms. It's customary that when there is a change in the political party winning the presidency, the new president will dismiss most, if not all, of the current U.S. Attorneys. They are political appointees. In fact, Bush the Elder replaced most of the Reagan-appointed U.S. Attorneys when he took office. It is highly unusual to dismiss them for anything other than poor job performance in the middle of a presidential term. And it is completely unheard of for a president to touch a U.S. Attorney who is involved in a high profile investigation of the president's own party.

[Ninong]

Maybe we should ask Tom Tomorrow to figure out the mystery of the U.S. Attorney firings?





P.S. -- I wonder what Rudy Giuliani's close friend Donald Trump has to say about all this?

[Ninong]

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., predicted on NBC's "Meet the Press" that Gonzales would be forced from his job within a week. Schumer also proposed a short list of three Republican replacements.

The three lawyers Schumer suggested Democrats might support to replace Gonzales are:

-Michael B. Mukasey, who returned last year to the private sector after serving as chief U.S. district court judge of the southern district of New York. Mukasey, a Reagan administration nominee, presided over the terrorism trial of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and 11 co-defendants.

-Larry Thompson, left the Justice Department in 2003 after serving as deputy attorney general under John Ashcroft. Thompson focused on terrorism and corporate crime, including a role in going after Enron Corp.

-James Comey, left the Justice Department in 2005 after serving as Thompson's replacement. Comey is trusted by some Democrats because of his perceived discomfort with some of the administration's terrorism surveillance policies and because he named U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald as special prosecutor in the CIA leak case that ended with the conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

[Ninong]

The White House dumped 3,000 pages of emails yesterday evening and they're finally up on the House Judiciary Committee's website (see What's New). Each of those links takes you to 50 pages of emails. The good stuff has been redacted. In the cover letter to the committee, DOJ said that unredacted copies would be available for inspection by committee staff in private at DOJ. They don't want the really embarrassing stuff to show up on Keith Olbermann's show.

I'm beginning to think that both Alberto Gonzales and Paul McNulty will be gone by the end of the week, if not sooner. They would join Sampson and Battle on the roll of dearly departed DOJ officials caught up in this scandal.

The Bush White House is coming apart at the seams. There are so many high profile scandals exploding right now that it's hard to manage them all at the same time.

[schrocat]

Ok.
When does Rove go?

The WH can't allow him to be put under oath...

He might get asked irrelevant personal questions about his...umm...err...nocturnal activities and how they relate to his promotion of his "male friends".

P.S. That cartoon you posted up there is SPOT ON!

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by schrocat

Ok.
When does Rove go?

The WH can't allow him to be put under oath...

We're supposed to learn later this afternoon if the White House will allow Karl Rove and Harriet Miers to testify before Congress. Fred Fielding has been negotiating with Arlen Specter practically non-stop since last Friday over this issue. That's because they're trying to break the Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee away from Patrick Leahy, the Democratic chairman. Specter has been very critical of the White House and I think they're having a hard time getting him to go along with their game plan. Leahy has publicly stated that no one from the White House has talked to him, so obviously they're trying to work on the Republicans first.

I suspect that the White House will either refuse to allow Rove and Miers to testify or they will place unacceptable restrictions on their testimony. Either way, it would go immediately to the Supreme Court. I predict that if it does, the White House will lose. There are plenty of precedents for White House aides being forced to testify before Congress in response to congressional subpoenas. It's not like they're trying to force Bush or Cheney to testify.

[Ninong]

Final offer from the White House to Congress:

The White House will NOT allow Rove, Miers and Kelly (Miers' deputy) to testify under oath.

The White House will allow them to be interviewed by the committee behind closed doors but no recording will be allowed and no transcripts will be allowed and they will NOT be under oath. Nothing they say can be repeated and they will only respond if they think the question is appropriate and they feel like answering it.

[Ninong]

Sen. Chuck Schumer just said that they will respond to the White House's offer with a counter offer. He also promised that they will move forward with subpoenas on Thursday if they are not satisfied with the White House's response to their counter proposal.

[Ninong]

Rumor has it that Leahy and Conyers would be satisifed with the behind closed doors request as long as the testimony in under oath. They want both Rove and Miers under oath.

The White House will almost certainly refuse to allow them to be put under oath because that would force them to tell the truth.

[Ninong]

Bush called Gonzales this morning to "offer his strong support." That's either a sign that he's digging in his heels or just cover so that he won't look bad when Gonzales decides entirely on his own to step down so that he won't be a distraction and detract from the important work of the Justice Department at this critical time, etc., etc.

Anyway, Bush is scheduled to speak on the U.S. Attorneys matter at 5:45 p.m. EDT today!

[Ninong]

The Senate voted overwhelmingly Thursday [sic] to end the Bush administration's ability to unilaterally fill U.S. attorney vacancies as a backlash to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' firing of eight federal prosecutors. (Note to AP editors: Today is Tuesday, not Thursday!)

Amid calls from lawmakers in both parties to resign, Gonzales got a morale boost with an early-morning call from President Bush, their first conversation since a week ago, when the president said he was unhappy with how the Justice Department handled the firings.

With a 94-2 vote, the Senate passed a bill that canceled a Justice Department-authored provision in the Patriot Act that had allowed the attorney general to appoint U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation. Democrats say the Bush administration abused that authority when it fired the eight prosecutors and proposed replacing some with White House loyalists.

"If you politicize the prosecutors, you politicize everybody in the whole chain of law enforcement," said Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

The bill, which has yet to be considered in the House, would set a 120-day deadline for the administration to appoint an interim prosecutor. If the interim appointment is not confirmed by the Senate in that time, a permanent replacement would be named by a federal district judge.

P.S. -- I'm waiting for Phony Tony Snow to tell us that this vote will "embolden our enemies in Iraq."

[Ninong]

Bush has miscalculated. He's calling this a "partisan fishing expedition aimed at honorable public servants."

This could backfire. There are 21 Republican senators up for reelection next year. They saw what happened to George Allen and Rick Santorum et al. thanks to Duke Cunningham, Tom DeLay, Mark Foley, Scooter Libby and other assorted GOP scandals. They will want to put some distance between themselves and a White House that has support from only 30% of the American people.

Ignorance and arrogance is a deadly combination. Bush's support of Gonzales is going to cost him and his party more than he knows.

Look for job approval numbers in the 27-28% range within the next couple of weeks.

[Ninong]

WASHINGTON — Six of the eight U.S. attorneys fired by the Justice Department ranked in the top third among their peers for the number of prosecutions filed last year, according to an analysis of federal records.

In addition, five of the eight were among the government's top performers in winning convictions.

The analysis undercuts Justice Department claims that the prosecutors were dismissed because of lackluster job performance.

Here.

[Ninong]

Prosecutor Says Bush Appointees Interfered With Tobacco Case

The leader of the Justice Department team that prosecuted a landmark lawsuit against tobacco companies said yesterday that Bush administration political appointees repeatedly ordered her to take steps that weakened the government's racketeering case.

Sharon Y. Eubanks said Bush loyalists in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's office began micromanaging the team's strategy in the final weeks of the 2005 trial, to the detriment of the government's claim that the industry had conspired to lie to U.S. smokers.

She said a supervisor demanded that she and her trial team drop recommendations that tobacco executives be removed from their corporate positions as a possible penalty. He and two others instructed her to tell key witnesses to change their testimony. And they ordered Eubanks to read verbatim a closing argument they had rewritten for her, she said.

"The political people were pushing the buttons and ordering us to say what we said," Eubanks said. "And because of that, we failed to zealously represent the interests of the American public."

[Ninong]

Remember when the head Republican in New Hampshire and a couple of his underlings were convicted of jamming Democratic phones on election day so that the Democrats and their labor union buddies wouldn't be able to get out the vote? Remember that?

How much you want to bet that the Justice Department shut down that investigation so that Kenny Mehlman wouldn't be charged. All of those calls were placed to Mehlman's office in the White House. Some two or three dozen calls on election day. Mehlman says he has no idea who answered those calls or what they were about. He said it was customary for various state campaign managers to check in with his office on election day.

Remember that?

It would be interesting to ask Karl Rove about that under oath. It would be interesting to get the federal prosecutors under oath to ask them if they were told to shut it down.