LURITA DOAN-- YET ANOTHER POSTERGIRL FOR REPUBLICAN CORRUPTION RUN AMUCK INSIDE THE BUSH REGIME

GSA head Lurita Doan was a suspicious appointee to begin with. Her qualifications to head the nation's main federal contracting agency, the General Services Administration (GSA), seemed to have been primarily that she and her husband had given hundreds of thousands of dollars in political contributions to Bush and other right wing politicians. Yesterday Bush's Office of Special Counsel recommended she be fired for engaging in "the most pernicious of political activity" banned by the 1939 Hatch Act and for refusing to cooperate with the investigation. ""Doan solicited the political activity of over 30 of her subordinate employees when she asked 'How can we help our [Republican] candidates?'" The recommendation points out that "Doan has shown no remorse and lacks an appreciation for the seriousness of her violation."

Like Gonzales, she serves "at the pleasure" of the president and apparently he gets a great deal of pleasure surrounding himself with incompetent crooks and scoundrels whose appreciation of the law is exactly what his own his: nil. Bush and Rove-- not to mention Cheney-- are likely to sympathize with Doan when the Office of Special Counsel letter to Bush criticizes her for defending the meeting by claiming it was attended by political appointees who witnessed a presentation that "would likely be in line with 'their own beliefs.'"

It was clear from the moment Doan took the stand at Henry Waxman's House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that she is a deceitful partisan hack who has been schooled to repeat, ad nauseum "I do not remember."

Watch the video of Blue America freshman Bruce Braley (D-IA) questioning Doan and showing how she conspired with Karl Rove to politicize the GSA in the most narrowly partisan possible way.



Doan has been caught trying to use government resources to defeat Democratic elected officials. Waxman's committee has uncovered a clearly illegal conspiracy between Rove's office, the Republican National Committee and Doan's GSA.

Today's USAToday reports that Scott Bloch, head of the Office of Special Counsel, recommends that "Administrator Doan be disciplined to the fullest extent for her serious violation of the Hatch Act and insensitivity to cooperating fully and honestly in the course of our investigation." She's being dragged back in front of Waxman's Committee tomorrow for further questioning.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said they had received the Bloch letter and it was under review. The White House previously acknowledged conducting about 20 meetings over the past several years for federal employees on GOP election prospects while insisting that such informational briefings are neither unlawful nor unusual.

...The special counsel's office said it had interviewed 21 of the 36 GSA political appointees who attended the Jan. 26 meeting with J. Scott Jennings, the White House deputy director of the Office of Political Affairs. The counsel's office also talked to Jennings and interviewed Doan for nine hours over two days.

It said Doan, in her June 1 response, did not dispute that she posed a question on how Republican candidates can be helped, but "tries to shift the focus of this matter and minimize her illegal activity."

She also suggested that some political appointees who talked to the office might have had reason to be biased because they were unhappy with poor performance ratings.

Her typical Republican-caught-in-the-act claim that it was everyone else's fault but her own and that the witnesses were biased against her was refuted by a review of performance evaluations, which found satisfactory ratings and positive remarks for all the cooperating employees.

Bloch's letter to the White House, predictably, does not touch on Rove's role, something which Waxman owes it to America to expose tomorrow.


UPDATE: DOAN ON THE HOT SEAT THIS FINE MORNING

Although the media is all abuzz about Miers and Taylor getting subpoenaed in the Purge-gate coverup-- who can keep up with all the scandals permeating every aspect of this regime so foul?-- our Lurita has been hauled back in front of Waxman's committee just now. Waxman got the show off with a bang:

"Ms. Doan didn't just disparage the employees [who gave information about her statements to the Committee], under oath she told the Special Counsel, and again I quote, 'until extensive rehabilitation of their performance occurs, they will not be getting promoted, they will not be getting bonuses or special awards or anything of that nature.' Apparently Ms. Doan's position is that it is fine for her to retaliate against her employees by denying them promotions, bonuses and awards so long as she does so in secret and no one knows about it."