WHO'S MONICA GOODLING? WHAT'S SHE AFRAID TO TESTIFY ABOUT? WHY DID SHE RESIGN? AND... WHAT'S NEXT?

We sure do get to meet all manner of unsavory characters as the Bush Regime pukes up one kook after another. You know, tomorrow morning we have Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) coming to do a Blue America chat at FDL and I spent over an hour with him on the phone today getting prepared. What a brilliant guy! Something he talked about though just struck me, which is that the Bush conservatives and the Norquist gang hate and distrust government and when they undermine it with all these scandals and outrages that look like incompetence... well, at the very least they have the satisfaction of knowing they're turning people away from the concept of collective social action (i.e.- government). They really do want to wreck it-- and that's the one thing the Bush Regime has been able to do. As Congressman Nadler pointed out to me, half their high level appointees at the regulatory agencies are lobbyists from regulated industries who are dead set against regulation. I thought immediately of all the dead pets thanks to the FDA's failings, not to mention FEMA's role in making the Katrina aftermath far worse than it had to be. The Congressman pointed out the EPA and how Bush Regime political hacks overruled professional scientists whose research findings on climate change differed from the Party Line. Anyway, tomorrow at 11am (ET), come and heard Congressman Nadler talk about some of these stuff from his very unique perspective; end of advertisement and back to Monica M. Goodling.

In case it's a new name to you, let me catch you up a little. She was a top aide to Abu Gonzales, the liaison between the White House and the Department of Justice. You see where this is going already, right? The fired U.S. Attorneys and the politicization of the American justice system. So Congress called on her to testify she refused, on the grounds that she might incriminate herself, and took a (paid) leave of absence. Today, Good Friday (slowwwwwwwww news day three days), she resigned. And the Regime offered no explanation. It is widely believed that she was in on the politics of helping Senator Pete "Sneaky Pete" Domenici (R-NM), Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) and Rove get rid of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias.

Abu Gonzales and his chief deputy both claim-- as usual-- they know nothing and that they "had removed themselves from any personnel decisions related to Goodling." No doubt. Meanwhile House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers "remains committed to questioning Monica Goodling, especially with this new development. Her involvement and general knowledge of what happened makes her a valuable piece to this puzzle."

Today's Washington Post points out that this isn't the first abrupt departure from the DoJ since the Regime has been called out on the carpet by Congress for their malfeasance.

Her departure follows the resignation last month of D. Kyle Sampson, Gonzales's former chief of staff, who went on to testify in the Senate that Gonzales was more directly involved in the prosecutor firings than he had sometimes acknowledged.

Sampson and Goodling worked closely together on the firings, particularly in the case of an Arkansas prosecutor removed to make way for a former aide to presidential advisor Karl Rove.

Both Gonzales aides also participated in briefings for Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty and others prior to testimony in Congress that has since been shown to be inaccurate. Goodling and her attorneys have cited McNulty's complaints about the briefings as the reason for her refusal to testify.