THE PERVERSION OF AMERICAN JUSTICE-- BROUGHT TO YOU BY TEXAS SLIMEBAGS GEORGE W. BUSH, KARL ROVE AND ALBERTO GONZALES (SUPPORT FROM JON KYL)

A lot of people ask me why Doolittle, Pombo, DeLay and other Abramoff/Marianas Islands scammers still aren't in prison. Hey, if it were up to me... So, why not ask The Torturer. You see... firing U.S. Attorneys like Carol Lam and David Iglesias isn't a new thing for Bush and Gonzales. They've been manipulating the Justice system for quite some time. Last week the Boston Globe reminded us of how Gonzales moved in to protect DeLay, Abramoff and the Gang a couple years ago with the same kind of stunt.

A U.S. grand jury in Guam opened an investigation of controversial lobbyist Jack Abramoff more than two years ago, but President Bush removed the supervising federal prosecutor, and the probe ended soon after.

The previously undisclosed Guam inquiry is separate from a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia that is investigating allegations that Abramoff bilked Indian tribes out of millions of dollars.

In Guam, a US territory in the Pacific, investigators were looking into Abramoff's secret arrangement with Superior Court officials to lobby against a court reform bill then pending in Congress. The legislation, since approved, gave the Guam Supreme Court authority over the Superior Court.

In 2002, Abramoff was retained by the Superior Court in what was an unusual arrangement for a public agency. The Los Angeles Times reported in May that Abramoff was paid with a series of $9,000 checks funneled through a Laguna Beach, Calif., lawyer to disguise the lobbyist's role working for the Guam court. No separate contract was authorized for Abramoff's work.

Guam court officials have never explained the contractual arrangement. At the time, Abramoff was a well-known lobbying figure in the Pacific islands because of his work for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and Saipan garment manufacturers, accused of employing workers in what critics called sweatshop conditions.

A Grand Jury subpoena (Nov. 18, 2002) precipitated the firing of U.S. Attorney Fed Black by Bush the very next day. Black had held the position since being appointed by Bush's father a decade before. "At the time he was replaced, Black was directing a long-term investigation into allegations of public corruption in the administration of then-Governor Carl Gutierrez. The probe produced numerous indictments, including some of the governor's political associates and top aides. Bush replaced him with a Republican Party hack, Leonardo Rapadas.

Ari Berman reported on this story last February in The Nation.

Now that Jack Abramoff's dealings with members of Congress have drawn criminal indictments, the disgraced lobbyist's ties to the Bush Administration are starting to get attention. Reporters are peppering press secretary Scott McClellan with questions about "staff-level meetings" with Abramoff in the White House. Photographs of him with President Bush and other high-level officials are surfacing. Little notice has been paid, however, to the Justice Department, charged with prosecuting Abramoff. Evidence has emerged that the department played an active role in shutting down an investigation of Abramoff's dubious lobbying activities in Guam in November 2002. The story raises questions about whether Justice can be trusted with this historic investigation--and whether top White House officials actively abetted Abramoff's shady dealings as early as 2001.

Is it possible that there can be anyone anywhere who fails to see a pattern here? Have you met Arizona's most corrupt wingnut pol and Karl Rove protector, Jon Kyl? Even with Gonzales and Bush raising the white flag on a bipartisan Senate proposal to force them to restore Senate confirmation for U.S. attorneys they replace, Kyl, one of the worst rubber stamp ideologues in Congress, objects.