SNOOP HAS A MESSAGE FOR BILL O'REILLY-- MAKES SENSE TO ME

I lived in Holland for 4 years, 4 wonderful, glorious years. John Amato over at Crooks and Liars just told me he had a video from a Dutch TV show he thought I'd like. He was right-- and I think you'll like it too. The audience are all Dutch but you can tell from the applause that they totally get it-- maybe more than a lot of Americans.



Now O'Reilly and Snoop Dogg have some history. In fact, other than MC Rove, O'Reilly never met a rapper he could stomach. They're not fans of his either.

THE GEORGE W. BUSH "SCANDALS AND FUCK-UPS" COLLECTOR PLATES

Ahhh... can this clip be submitted as evidence in an impeachment hearing?

RUDY SAYS WHICHEVER COUSIN HE'S MARRIED TO ON ANY GIVEN WEEK WILL SIT IN ON CABINET MEETINGS

I guess it's better that he bring whichever... woman he's married to at the moment to the cabinet meetings than any of his Mafia friends-- yes, real Mafia; we'd be trading in Bush's bad enough Mormon Mafia for the actual Cosa Nostra. (I guess even worse would be his Opus Dei pals.) But, come on, is this what the Republicans want to thrust on America next? Do they hate the country that much?

Actually, the answer to that is "no." Even Republicans are tearing out their hair at Giuliani's latest unmasking as an imbecile. Yes, all you Republicans who think he was invented on 9/11, you're getting to know the real Rudy Giuliani now. And there's more to the real Rudy than just fighting off the mythical Arab armies that stormed NYC on 9/11. In fact there's even more than appointing liberal judges, supporting gun control, gays and  women's choice; even more than the President of the United States of America going into conferences with world leaders who have been watching little films like this. Look, if habitual cross-dressing makes you happy, that is not a problem for me. It's not my cup of tea but it doesn't make you less a nice person. But I just keep wondering what the low-info Republican primary voters in states like South Carolina and Iowa are going to do when they realize the guy they think they support is a drag queen. Just asking.


Anyway, there is more to Rudy than just all that stuff. As radical right maniac Ramesh Ponnuru-- oh, gee, I hope he keeps away from George Allen-- wrote this week, Giuliani's subterfuge of posing as a supply-side tax cutter is as convincing as his portrayal of Marilyn Monroe.


LATE BREAKING NEWS:


Rudy is now promising not to make any of his wives Cabinet members. And his ex-partner, the Mafia-connected Bernie Kerik-- who proved to be even too corrupt for the Bush Regime-- will probably wind up in prison aferall. Kerik, one of Giuliani's closest associates-- who he personally recommended to Doofus-in-Chief as Secretary of Homeland Security-- went from being Giuliani's campaign security adviser, corrections chief, police commissioner and eventual partner in Giuliani-Kerik, a security arm of Giuliani Partners, which Giuliani established to cash in on his notoriety after 9/11. Supposedly, according to today's Washington Post Giuliani isn't going to be indicted along with Kerik.

About The Art: I'm not certain who Rudy's stylist or makeup artist was but the picture of him in drag is not photoshopped or changed in any way. Nor is the picture of him with his Mafia connection Bernard Kerik. The one up top, however... well all we know about that is that comes from Jesus' General.

BLUE AMERICA: JERRY McNERNEY-- CONGRESSMAN AT YOUR CORNER

Today we welcome Jerry McNerney-- now Congressman Jerry McNerney back to Firedoglake. It's been 8 months since we last sat down with Jerry for a chat, at a time when Inside-the-Beltway pros were scoffing at the idea that an anti-war, grassroots, alternative energy expert with no support from the Party Establishment could take on a powerful and entrenched incumbent-- in a Republican district. Join us over at FDL on Saturday at 1PM Pacific Time and find out what's happened with Citizen McNerney since then.

If you know who Karl Rove is it certainly didn't surprise you to find out at this week's GSA hearings that he sits around in his White House office targeting Democrats for swiftboat campaigns. Nor should it have surprised you to find out that he illegally conspires with other Bush Regime functionaries inside the government to use taxpayer dollars to harm targeted Democrats and bolster unpopular Republican incumbents. And it probably came as no surprise to you that high on Rove's "kill" list is newly elected California congressman Jerry McNerney (CA-11). He was #3 on the hit list Rove gave to the GSA in the hope that they would help him create an environment to make voters in the San Joaquin Valley disgruntled.

Their new congressman has been working very hard to make sure San Joaquin Valley voters wouldn't be. In fact, I've been very impressed by the difference in approach between a true grassroots Democrat like Jerry and some of the other freshmen who are perceived to be in for tough races. The Blue Dogs seem to think the way to win re-election is to behave and vote like a Republican. It is no coincidence that of Rove's 20 top targets, most are Blue Dogs; only 2 or 3 besides Jerry McNerney have proven themselves to be true progressives so far. Instead of going over to the Dark Side and betraying his supporters, in the vain hope of capturing GOP votes, Jerry has put his nose to the grindstone and methodically gone about making good on the campaign promises he made when he ran for office. He's been proving himself to be a hard-working, serious, constituent service-oriented representative who puts the job first and the politics... on a back burner.

He was the first congressman to author his own legislation-- The Healthy Community Water Supply Act-- and get it passed, with strong bipartisan support. Jerry was driven to seek office, not because of "politics" but to get things done. He's a national security hawk who, as an ex-military man with a son currently serving overseas, takes the safety of our nation very, very seriously. The catastrophic and dangerous approach that the Bush Regime has taken in terms of international relations is important to Jerry and he is a strong and vocal supporter of making sure the troops are properly trained and properly equipped-- and on their way home as soon as possible. The dangers America faces from fanatics is not something Bush made up, although it is something Bush screwed up-- and exacerbated. Jerry isn't a lawyer; he's an engineer. His engineer's mind is about solving problems and that's what he's been working at in Congress since he got there. His voting record is populist and progressive and his approach has been inclusive and open.

Congresswoman Hilda Solis, who I ran into at a McNerney rally last weekend, told me he's been one of the more outspoken freshmen on matters that impact the lives or ordinary people. The two of them were appointed to serve on the high profile Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. This is totally Jerry's cup of tea-- as much as any other factor that inspired him to run for Congress. It's on this committee and on the Transportation and Infrastruction Committee, on which he also sits, that he feels he can serve the interests of his constituents, dealing with local issues like the Sacramento River Delta levee system and creating desperately needed new industries based on bio-fuels, solar technology and new auto technology.

Meanwhile, when I asked the new congressman, a mathematics Ph.D., what he likes most about the gig, he was effusive. "I love the job. I love going out and meeting people and hearing about their issues and their ideas... their passions. It's one of the things I most enjoy." He's been back in the district every weekend, holding "Congressman At The Corner" sessions in Stockton, Tracy, Danville and Morgan Hill so far. These have been well-covered by the media and Jerry has built a good rapport with people who had grown used to Pombo's imperious and haughty manner. Jerry's media coverage has been excellent, showing him as engaged in the life of his district, an important factor for a freshman Democrat in a purple district.

He'll need that as the Republicans continue to pour millions of dollars into CA-11 to try to unseat him. The RNCC's swiftboat website, trying to paint him as some kind of a radical, already shows the direction they'll be heading in. The Berkeley Bubble deconstructs some of the lies the Republican swiftboaters are already hurling at Jerry.

For example, the site attacks McNerney for voting for new taxes on energy producers, for higher prices for consumers, to stifle domestic energy production, and further increase our dependence on foreign energy sources. In reality, the bill that McNerney voted for, HR 6, actually promotes energy conservation and research, development and production of alternative renewable energy sources.

Over at Daily Kos on Thursday Markos had to hold back his laughter when he analyzed the Republicans' limp efforts to smear Jerry. He breaks it down by asking the question: "But really, the GOP plan is to spam people with the charge that McNerney supports the popular speaker's popular agenda?" Good point, especially considering the polling data that shows the votes Jerry has backed-- stem cell research, cutting the interest rates on students loans, increasing the minimum wage, voting to enact the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, supporting benchmarks and a withdrawal deadline for Iraq, are all things residents in CA-11 approve of-- and all things they know Republicans do not support.

Two weeks ago at our little Blue America town hall meeting we picked 5 members of Congress to send $200 checks to in appreciation for sticking to their campaign promises. Jerry was one of them. At the same time John Kerry announced that Jerry had won his March Madness competition. Kerry wrote that "Jerry McNerney used grassroots energy to defeat Richard Pombo, a seven-term incumbent. Now delivering for his district, he's already being attacked by deep-pocketed Republicans."

Pombo isn't running again; he's now officially a lobbyist for the oil and gas interests. Instead, the Republicans are putting up a hard right lunatic, one of the most radical right kooks to have ever served in the state legislature, Dean Andal. He's far too extreme for this moderate district but he's connected to all the crooked developer interests that supported Pombo, so he'll have plenty of money at his disposal and, obviously, Karl Rove (unless he's in prison by then). Last year our community helped Jerry make history by retiring one of the most reactionary and corrupt Republicans in the House. 1,100 of us contributed $25,140.86 to his campaign in just 4 months. We should do much better in this cycle and today is a good day to start. It's the last day of the quarter on which the financial data the mass media salivates over is based. Jerry has chosen to spend 2 hours of the day with us at Firedoglake, answering whatever questions we want to throw his way.

To make it more interesting, I have a carton of beautiful Greatest Hits boxsets from one of Stockon's best known musical sons, Chris Isaak. It's a special edition with 18 songs and 18 videos on an accompanying DVD and it includes an incredible acoustic version of "Forever Blue" as a bonus. The first 25 contributions for more than the value of the CD will get thank you notes from Blue America-- along with the CD. Here's where to contribute. If you don't want the CD just add one cent to your contribution.


UPDATE: THE TRACY PRESS WAS PAYING ATTENTION

Yesterday's Tracy Press did an extensive piece on politics in the 11th CD and journalist John Upton went out of his way to talk about the importance of the grassroots and the netroots in Jerry's victory. He closed his story with a mention of the FDL chat.

The congressman will chat live at 1 p.m. today with supporters at the Fire Dog Lake blog. He last chatted live with supporters during his election campaign, according to his spokesman.
"It is a little bit risky because it’s uncensored," McNerney said, "(but) it was a lot of fun last time."

It was even more fun this time.

NANCY PELOSI GOES TO SYRIA. WINGNUTS GO INTO ORBIT

Is there a story in the fact that Speaker Nancy Pelosi is leading a congressional delegation on a fact-finding trip to the Middle East that will include Syria, a country the Bush Regime accuses of all kinds of things? The Bush Regime thinks so and their propaganda arm is out screaming that the sky is falling. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad "probably really wants people to come, and have a photo opportunity, and have tea with him, and have discussions about where they're coming from. But we just think it's a really bad idea," according to Bush's current spokesperson, Dana Perino. Bad, Nancy! Bad! Why do you people need fact when you have the Bush Team to supply for whatever facts you need?

The State Department gave Pelosi's staff a pre-trip briefing and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad-- yes Bush still has an Embassy there-- is assisting. Among the congressmembers accompanying the Speaker are Congress' first Muslim member, Keith Ellison (MN), two Jewish members, Henry Waxman (CA) and Tom Lantos (CA) and a Bush rubber stamp Republican from Ohio, David Hobson. (Why do I call Hobson a Bush rubber stamp? Of the 44 votes related to Iraq between October 10, 2002 and May 25, 2005, Hobson voted the Bush line every single time. Not once did he ask himself if this knee-jerk support for Bush's policies might not be what his constituents in Springfield or in the suburbs of Columbus and Dayton might think about the escalating and catastrophic war he was blithely supporting.)

So what's the story? Probably just another story about more Bush Regime hypocrisy. Why hypocrisy? There's an all-Republican congressional delegation in Syria right now. It's led by Bush rubber stamp Frank Wolf (R-VA) and includes Bush rubber stamp Bob Aderholt (R-AL).


Tomorrow Speaker Pelosi is addressing the Israeli Knesset and she has pointed out that her stop in Syria is in line with the unanimous, bipartisan recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, recommendations that Bush has completely ignored. (He seems to have a visceral disdain for anything with the word "study" in it, a reaction that goes back to earliest childhood.) "As recommended by the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan delegation led by Speaker Pelosi intends to discuss a wide range of security issues affecting the United States and the Middle East with representatives of governments in the region, including Syria,'' is what Pelosi's office said to the press.


The right-wing press propagandists for Bush have, predictably, gone batshit crazy over the trip screaming like chimpanzees that Pelosi is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. If you want a sample, here's Tammy Bruce, one of the least intelligent of the right wing propagandists anywhere. After quoting the White House saying Speaker Pelosi's trip is "a really bad idea," a fuming and laughable Tammy went on one of her switched-on tirades:

Absolutely the most juvenile, asinine thing I've ever heard. A really bad idea?! That's the most they can come up with? The reason the president, and consequently this nation, is in such trouble is because neither the president nor the Republicans behave as though they have the moral high ground, or are even defending themselves or their policies enough to break a sweat.

How dare Pelosi give extraordinary legitimacy to a terrorist nation whose own foreign policy rests on the murder of Christian leaders in the region. And how dare the Bush Administration for not saying something as simple as just that.

And if you like reading this kind of uninformed right-wing blather, as stupid as Tammy Bruce is, few are as vitriolic and filled with pure hatred as GOP blogger Sister Toldjah. You wanna know what's in the craniums of that 28% of dead-enders who still think Bush is doing a good job? Sister Toldjah is the place to look; you'll never find someone more driven by hatred, ignorance and delusion: "Also, exactly what are Pelosi and co. planning on discussing with Assad? Maybe when Rep. Hobson leaves the meeting for a restroom break, the remaining group who are all Democrats will work to undermine the Bush administration's policies... Can we question their patriotism now?" Yes, honey, you can question whatever you like; make sure the tinfoil hat is on straight.

No wonder fewer and fewer people are paying these lunatics any attention. For the Bush Regime and their lackeys this kind of reaction is par for the course, tactics they've used before.


ANOTHER LONG-TIME BUSH SUPPORTER HAS HAD ENOUGH

I don't think he heard the Blue America campaign theme song from last year but Texas Bush loyalist Matthew Dowd-- a member of the Bush inner circle for almost a decade-- has called it quits and went to the NY Times with his story. Instead of playing politics-as-usual with congressional good-will trips and catering to the narrow bigotry on the outer fringes of the GOP, Bush and Rove should be paying attention to serious and well-informed-- if self-serving-- figures like Dowd. "Dowd’s journey from true believer to critic in some ways tracks the public arc of Mr. Bush’s political fortunes... Dowd said he had become so disillusioned with the war that he had considered joining street demonstrations against it, but that his continued personal affection for the president had kept him from joining protests whose anti-Bush fervor is so central. Mr. Dowd, 45, said he hoped in part that by coming forward he would be able to get a message through to a presidential inner sanctum that he views as increasingly isolated. But, he said, he holds out no great hope."

WHAT HAPPENS IF A SENATOR BECOMES PRESIDENT?

Yesterday CongressDaily brought up an interesting point to consider. There's a good chance that the next president of the United States is going to be someone who is will have an unexpired U.S. Senate term to fill. The last sitting senator to have been elected president was JFK in 1960. This time it would be the case with Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or that crazy old Republican kook from Arizona. And some of the hometown pols pushing these guys the hardest are the ones interested in replacing them. The most optimum scenario would be Obama winning the presidency and solidly progressive Jan Schakowsky succeeding him. The nightmare scenario in Illinois would be ultra-sleazy and corrupt Rahm Emanuel getting into the Senate. There are also 3 progressive African-American congressmen who would like to follow Obama: Bobby Rush, Jesse Jackson, Jr. and Danny Davis. Then there are Chicago's just re-elected Mayor Richard Daley, a potential embarrassment to the Democratic Party in terms of egregious and unbounded corruption on a scale as wide as a Tom DeLay or Jerry Lewis.

It's far more likely, though, that a Senate replacement will have to be found in New York since it's hard to fathom that Hillary won't be the next President of the United States of America. Best scenario: very progressive-- far more than Hillary-- upstate Congressman Maurice Hinchey. Other Democratic congressmembers who would like to move to the Senate include progressive Jose Serrano (from the Bronx) and two moderates, Gregory Meeks (from Queens), and Nita Lowey (from Westchester). And of course there's always Hillary's husband (from Harlem).

In the extremely unlikely event that McCain becomes president, Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano would be bound by Arizona law to name a Republican and it isn't likely she would appoint anyone but a caretaker to just ride out the remainder of McCain's term, setting up an open race for 2010. Three far right exremists, Jeff Flake, John Shadegg and Trent Franks, are all eager to get their hands on that seat as would moderate Democrat Ed Pastor. And then there's the state's wildly popular governor...

BUSH REGIME ADMITTING THE POLITICIZATION OF THE GSA IS NORMAL OPERATING PROCEDURE

In the last couple of days I've tried to cover the Waxman hearings on the politicization of the General Services Administration (GSA) and how Rove illegally uses the federal bureaucracy to advance a narrow partisan agenda. Yesterday I reprinted the entire letter than Waxman sent to Rove demanding truthful answers. Today this escalating story of gross political corruption made it into the Washington Post.

Waxman and the congressmen on his House Oversight and Government Reform Committee were aghast at how blatantly the Bush Regime has been using the federal bureaucracy to push Republican Party electoral goals. This practice was made explicitly illegal by the Hatch Act. Keep in mind that this is not a reference to sleazy Bush Regime apologist Orrin Hatch (R-UT), but to principled Senator Carl Hatch (D-NM). The actual name of the law is officially "An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities." It was passed in 1939 to combat a perception of Democratic Party corruption, although it was proposed by a Democrat, and passed by Democrats and signed by a Democratic President. The Republicans, in the Senate, a thoroughly discredited-- but still pesky-- minority party at the time, wanted a much tougher version than the Democrats and the Democrats went along with them and let them have their way. Their addition legislates that anyone below policymaking level in the executive branch of the federal government must not only refrain from political practices that would be illegal for any citizen but must abstain from "any active part" in political campaigns. The Hatch Act was challenged, unsuccessfully twice before the Supreme Court (1947 and 1974).

With that in mind, think about Rove and his political shop in the White House sending over slide shows to government departments targeting vulnerable Democratic congressmen and asking for help in shoring up the electoral fortunes of unpopular Republican incumbents. As the Post puts it:

Six political appointees at the GSA who participated in the videoconference said [GSA Director] Doan asked at the conclusion how the agency could help GOP candidates win in the next elections, according to a letter Waxman sent to Doan.

During the hearing, Doan said at least 10 times that she does not recall asking employees to help the GOP or does not recall details about the presentation.

The matter is being investigated by the independent Office of Special Counsel.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said the presentation was not out of the ordinary.

"There is regular communication from the White House to political appointees throughout the administration," he said.

HEGDISH, PART 2: LIMBAUGH WARNS BUSH NOT TO GIVE LIBERALS THE HEAD OF ALBERTO GONZALES (HE REALLY SAID THAT)

Before we get to the drug-addled radio propagandist, we have a new character, apparently another designated fall-guygal, to throw into the Purge-Gate mix, Sara Taylor. She's a top aide of Rove's and she's just been voted off the island in an attempt to save his fat ass. Facing a subpoena, she was "identified [by Sampson] in yesterday's hearing with a former top Justice Department official as seeking the resignation of a US Attorney in Arkansas." She, along with Scott Jennings, another of Rove's sleazy criminals inside the White House, were the ones who, at Rove's behest, got rid of U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins in Arkansas to place a completely incompetent political operative and Rove crony, Tim Griffin.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that 2 others from Rove's little shoppe of horrors, Peter Wehner (Bush calls his memos Wehner-grams) and Barry Jackson, although they're trying to paint them us unrelated to the Purge-Gate scandals. Just a coinkydink!

Reading the transcript of Limbaugh's show is excruciating since is just lie upon lie upon distortion upon half-truth upon lie. Let me save the rest of you the effort: "I'm at a loss to understand why it is that even some people on our side and the conservative media think throwing Gonzales away is going to stop this. Now, they'll say, 'Well, that's not what we're trying to do. We want competence. We are conservatives, and we have high values, and high standards.' This is a battle going on here. There's an election that's going to hinge on stuff like this, and everybody the administration throws overboard is a tantamount admission to people that pay scant attention to politics there's all kinds of corruption going on in there." So the hell with competence, high standards, a sense of values? Let's just win the election? LOL! What he smoking snorting?

Limbaugh, someone who hates democracy so much that he can't control himself from heaping disdain on it and on the "common folks." He must have had an extra dose of whatever he's on lately today: "USA Today's got a poll: 'Do you think something's wrong about the firing of eight US attorneys?' 72% said yes. 72% of the American people, a bunch of blithering idiots who have no idea what they're talking about, but yet they voted, so these polls matter." He's not alone The Carpetbagger Report calls some more right wing propaganda agents out on the carpet. Mark Levin "goes on to say that questioning Gonzales' fitness for office is 'throwing your own people to the liberal wolves,' 'disloyal,' and 'self-destructive.' He describes conservatives who take this scandal seriously as offering a 'pusillanimous' response." There's no end. Well... today's NY Times editorializes about the end that they see.

If Mr. Sampson was trying to fall on his sword, he had horrible aim. In testimony that got so embarrassing for the White House that the Republicans tried to cut it off, Mr. Sampson simply ended up making it clearer than ever that the eight prosecutors were fired for political reasons.

He provided more evidence, also, that the attorney general and other top Justice Department officials were dishonest in their initial statements about the firings.

Mr. Sampson flatly contradicted the attorney general's claim that he did not participate in the selection of the prosecutors to be fired and never had a conversation about "where things stood." Mr. Sampson testified that Mr. Gonzales was "aware of this process from the beginning," and that the two men regularly discussed where things stood. Mr. Sampson also confirmed that Mr. Gonzales was at the Nov. 27 meeting where the selected prosecutors’ fates were sealed...

The administration insists that purge was not about partisan politics. But Mr. Sampson’s alternative explanation was not very credible-- that the decision about which of these distinguished prosecutors should be fired was left in the hands of someone as young and inept as Mr. Sampson. If this were an aboveboard, professional process, it strains credulity that virtually no documents were produced when decisions were made, and that none of his recommendations to Mr. Gonzales were in writing.

It is no wonder that the White House is trying to stop Congress from questioning Mr. Rove, Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, and other top officials in public, under oath and with a transcript. The more the administration tries to spin the prosecutor purge, the worse it looks.

UPDATE: REPUBLICANS ARE SO CRUDE... ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY ATTACK EACH OTHER

Congressional Republicans have no faith in Bush as a man of his word. (LOL-- about time; join the rest of the human race.) He's asked them to go out and defend serial liar and cover-up artist Abu Gonzales and all they can remember about the last time he bothered them about defending one of his indefensible inner circle-- Donald Rumsfeld-- is that he waited 'til they had all made public spectacles of themselves and then fired Rumfeld, leaving them all looking even more clueless than usual. According to today's SFGate a former Republican aide claims GOP congressmen are responding differently this time: "Don't ask me to put whipped cream on that turd pile." Gonzales is said to be in talks with high-level officials (presumably Rove) about the most graceful-- useful?-- way of committing political hara-kiri.

Meanwhile Bush said today he has "100 percent confidence" in Gonzo, usually a sure sign someone is about to get shit-canned in this Regime. Snarlin' Arlen (R-PA) made a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association and he made it clear he'll probably urge Gonzales to resign after his April 17 testimony at the Senate Judiciary Committee. "A number of Republicans, as well as all the Democrats, have called for his resignation, and I won't do that until he has a chance to testify. Attorney General Gonzales has his work cut out for him." (Giggles were heard throughout the audience.) Specter went on that he had told Gonzo last week that "you're going to have to explain why you said you weren't involved in discussions [about firing the U.S. attorneys] when the e-mails show you were at [the] meeting where the U.S. attorneys were talked about."

Is it any wonder there was no one in the streets of NYC in 2004 to tell Rudy G, Zell Miller and all the other zany GOP conventioneers, "You're nuts"?

"The spied-upon included many groups that, agree with their views or not, engaged purely in political activity; they had no history of violence and no agenda other than a constitutional right to oppose the government. The Billionaires are a good example. The only bomb that they've been known to throw is a joke that falls flat."
--Clyde Haberman, in his NYT column today, "How to Tell a Billionaire From a Bomber"

I imagine everyone has heard by now about the massive campaign of spying the New York Police Department undertook in advance of the 2004 Republican National Convention here, as a tool for keeping the sensitive GOP-ers safe from, well, anyone who might utter an unkind word about them, or otherwise intrude on the festivities planned for the repeat coronation of their Tiny King George.

Among the citizens rousted by the NYPD, NYT metro columnist Clyde Haberman notes in his "NYC" column today, was the Bush-bashing band of satirists Billionaires for Bush, described by Wikipedia as "a culture jamming political street theater organization that satirically purports to support George W. Bush for those activities which are perceived to benefit corporations and the super-wealthy." Our favorite curmudgeon wasn't about to let this pass without comment:

March 30, 2007
NYC

How to Tell a Billionaire From a Bomber
By CLYDE HABERMAN

The Billionaires, with a capital B, were delighted to hear that there are more superrich New Yorkers than they had thought.

Several Billionaires were sitting in Union Square Park the other day, and one of them remarked to us that 45 billionaires, small B, call New York home. Actually, we said, there are 50, judging from the latest Forbes magazine list.

Well, that touched off so many high-fives and shouts of "All right!" that you'd have thought the incredible had happened, like world peace or the Knicks making the playoffs.

"Ka-ching," said an exultant Andrew Boyd, also known as Phil T. Rich. Marco Ceglie, who at times calls himself Monet Oliver DePlace, had something of an "It's a Wonderful Life" moment. "Every time there's a new billionaire," he said, "a devil gets a new pitchfork."

All in all, they had to concede, these are not bad times for the rich and mighty, normally as unappreciated a minority as we have.

Speaking up for that put-upon class is a mission of the Billionaires, whose full name is Billionaires for Bush. You may have seen them in the streets, decked out in tuxes and gowns, praising Big Oil, proclaiming à la Leona Helmsley that only little people pay taxes and organizing events like Dick Cheney Is Innocent Day. In New York, they have circulated petitions demanding limousine lanes, freed "from the clutches of bicycles."

They are, as should be obvious, a band of satirists who don't think much of President Bush (or, for that matter, the never-met-an-unwelcome-developer climate of the Bloomberg City Hall).

They are also one of the many political groups that the New York Police Department spied on in advance of the Republican National Convention held here in 2004.

That the authorities have conducted covert operations in the wake of Sept. 11 is neither a surprise nor, many would say, a problem. These are dangerous times. Most New Yorkers probably accept that it would be derelict of the police not to keep tabs on potential threats, be they rampaging anarchists or — worse — terrorists. Courts have thus far agreed.

The only goal of the pre-convention surveillance was to keep the city safe, the mayor insisted this week. "We were not keeping track of political activities," he said. "We have no interest in doing that."

But as a report in The New York Times has disclosed, the spied-upon included many groups that, agree with their views or not, engaged purely in political activity; they had no history of violence and no agenda other than a constitutional right to oppose the government. The Billionaires are a good example. The only bomb that they've been known to throw is a joke that falls flat.

"Not only did we not do violence," Mr. Boyd said, "we did not profess doing violence or even pretend to profess doing violence. We see ourselves as a calming presence in demonstrations, getting out of that normal confrontational protest/police mode."

Melody Bates, a member whose nom de rire is Ivy League-Legacy, called humor one of the more effective ways to make a point. "A good joke is in essence a gift," she said, "and when you open with a gift, people are more receptive."

The question is whether City Hall and the police have struck a reasonable balance between security needs and the imperatives of free expression, or whether the authorities, in Mr. Ceglie's words, suffer from a post-9/11 case of "not knowing when to stop."

It isn't as if New York hasn't rethought other policies that were deemed absolutely essential in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks. With municipal blessing, hideous concrete barriers rose in front of one building after another across town. In recent months, most have finally been torn down — recognition that Fortress New York doesn't cut it.

Similar questions have been raised about the refusal of the National Park Service, in the name of security, to allow tourists to climb to the crown of the Statue of Liberty. Such a restriction at this potent symbol of American freedom has been strongly criticized by the likes of Senator Charles E. Schumer and Representative Anthony D. Weiner, who hardly see themselves as soft-on-terror types.

When the police spy on law-abiding groups, "it's hard not to feel that it is an attempt to discourage free speech," said Elissa Jiji, a k a Meg A. Bucks.

And Mr. Boyd drew lessons from the past. "It's like that famous quote," he said. "First, they came for the billionaires, and nobody said anything. . . . "

Quote of the day: At times, if you keep your eyes above the fold, Iraq can look sort of how Holy Joe, Straight Talkin' John and Chimpy the Prez see it

“If anything happens to us, they’re the ones responsible.”
--Suaada Saadoun, a 49-year-old Sunni widow with seven children, to Kurdish and American soldiers who had stopped two Shiite men and forced them out of their car after they tried to "ethnically cleanse" Ms. Saadoun and her family out of their home in a Shiite area of western Baghdad

This would be the good news. If you don't want to hear the bad news, at least not yet, skip the next paragraph.

"The next day," Edward Wong reports in today's NYT, "Ms. Saadoun was shot dead while walking by a bakery in the local market."

What's fascinating is the way the story is presented. I don't recall seeing a newspaper layout quite like it. It's so careful that it's impossible to believe it wasn't planned to "read" this way.

If you begin by looking, as I assume most everyone does, just at the above-the-fold portion of the front page, you don't even see a headline on this story. All you see is a pair of big (three-column) photos stacked on top of each other, to the left of the one-column "lead" story (about Kyle Sampson's Senate Judiciary Committee testimony yesterday [see Howie's coverage yesterday]).

On top is the photo reproduced above, with the caption--

THE WIDOW Suaada Saadoun told Kurdish and American soldiers on Tuesday that two Shiite men had tried to evict her on false premises. Ms. Saadoun was head of one of four Sunni Arab homes in her neighborhood.

Below it is a wide-cropped version (with some onlookers off to the left) of the photo at right, with the caption:

THE ARREST The two Shiite men were stopped at a checkpoint. One of them, Abbas Radhi, right, said he and his companion had done nothing wrong, but the eviction papers they held were for another neighborhood.

And you think, my goodness, maybe there is some good news coming out of Baghdad.

Then you flip below the fold and find a third photo in the series:

THE DAY AFTER Ms. Saadoun's phone call to a nearby military base kept her family from being falsely evicted, but she was killed the next day at a market. Her granddaughters were among those in mourning.

Finally comes the head:

Iraqi Widow Saves Her Home, but Victory Is Brief

And the start of the story proper:

BAGHDAD, March 29--The two men showed up on Tuesday afternoon to evict Suaada Saadoun's family. One was carrying a shiny black pistol.

Ms. Saadoun was a Sunni Arab living in a Shiite enclave of western Baghdad. A widowed mother of seven, she and her family had been chased out once before. This time, she called American and Kurdish soldiers at a base less than a mile to the east.

The men tried to drive away, but the soldiers had blocked the street. They pulled the men out of the car.

"If anything happens to us, they're the ones responsible," said Ms. Saadoun, 49, a burly, boisterous woman in a black robe and lavender-blue head scarf.

The Americans shoved the men into a Humvee. Neighbors clapped and cheered as if their soccer team had just won a title.

The next morning, Ms. Saadoun was shot dead while walking by a bakery in the local market.

Wong explains that he met Ms. Saadoun while accompanying the Kurdish soldiers who participated in the arrest of the two Shiite men Tuesday. He seems to have taken the story personally (to his credit).

Later he reports:

After the new security plan began on Feb. 14, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a conservative Shiite, said the government would crack down on sectarian evictions and help families return to their homes, but the displacement is continuing all the same.

"The forced evictions started up again this month," said Capt. Benjamin Morales, 28, a Bronx native who commands a company of the 82nd Airborne Division that oversees a swath of western Baghdad taken over by Shiite militias last year. "In my area, that's the biggest thing that's going on."

Wong details the history of the attempted forced expulsion of Ms. Saadoun and her family, in which she had enlisted the aid of the nearby American-Iraqi military base. Captain Morales had been involved all through it.

Captain Morales heard the news about Ms. Saadoun the next day around noon. She had been shot in the market earlier that morning, just northeast of the base and within spitting distance of the same checkpoint where the two Shiite men had been stopped. The captain paced around the hallway inside his command center. His face was ashen.

"What can you do?" his first sergeant said to him. "It's their problem. This is their country, and they need to work it out among themselves. There's nothing we can do about it."

An American patrol rolled out to Ms. Saadoun's home at 2 p.m. More than a dozen women dressed in black sat wailing in the backyard, awaiting the arrival of Ms. Saadoun's body from the hospital.

"I told you, ‘Don't go out, they'll kill you,'" one daughter cried out. "I told you, my lovely mother, ‘Don't go out, they'll kill you.'"

By the next morning, everyone living in the house had fled.

I suppose Senators Lieberman and McCain will tell us that this is exactly why we have to stay in Iraq. They insist that now for the first time we are seeing grounds for hope. (Of course, as Keith Olbermann pointed out the other night, if this is the first time there are grounds for hope, what about all those other times they told us about?) In reality, aren't we really providing cover for factions in the Iraqi civil war to carry out atrocities?

WHO DO THE HOLLYWOOD CELEBRITIES SUPPORT? AND HATE?

I never had many right wing friends. I know a few Republicans; not many. But in business you meet some from time to time and some seem friendly. I live in L.A. and there are hardly any around. One of my favorite restaurants-- especially when I have fancy out-of-town guests-- is the Water Grill and it draws a pretty establishment-looking crowd and sometimes I get a mildly Republican vibe in there. Someone once took me to Mastro's Steakhouse and it reeked of them. It was loud and brassy and the portions were enough for a family of four. Everything was gross; I never went back.

I do have one friend who claims to be a "libertarian" but who I've worked on for years and as a result he's now a more respectable human being-- he's even stopped whoring around, getting drunk and using drugs, and he's married a lovely (and progressive) woman and they have two kids and he has totally turned against eating unhealthy food and supporting Bush and the Republicans. Unfortunately, primitive tribal identity politics has a strong hold on him and last week he invited me to come with him to a fundraiser for the guy he's supporting for president, Giuliani. "It's time for an Italian president," is all he could say in defense of the goomba he wrote a $2,300 check for.

I know how fed up he is with the Iraq War and how the Republicans have disastrously botched what they call the "war on terror." I argued that by supporting a stay the course Republican like Giuliani he would be condemning his two sons to eventually have to go fight overseas. "They're protected," he says, something many wealthy, selfish sociopaths think about their own situation. What about other people's sons and daughters? It doesn't matter; it's time for an Italian president.

Today's L.A. Times has a piece on who Angeleno celebrities are supporting. Will Smith is for Obama; wingnut Dennis Miller is for Giuliani; Oprah is for Obama, as are Ben Affleck, Ed Norton, Matt Damon, George Clooney and David Geffen; Quincy Jones and a lot of the old school Dems are sticking with Hillary.

The didn't mention which Republicans Paris Hilton and Brittney Spears are backing. But the article goes on to talk about a growing sophistication among celebrities who have learned that their support can be a "double-edged sword."

Clooney points to a deeply personal example of Hollywood backlash: His father, former television anchorman and game show host Nick Clooney, lost his congressional race in Kentucky in 2004 after his opponent blasted him for having "Hollywood values."

"It became an issue of Hollywood versus the heartland," said Clooney, who opted not to publicly campaign for his father. "I believed I could only do him more harm."

So when Obama, an Illinois Democrat, told Clooney last year that he was thinking about running for president, the actor was excited but cautious. "I told him I would do anything for him, including staying completely away from him," said Clooney, speaking recently on his cellphone from the South Carolina set of his latest movie, "Leatherheads."

Obama, however, welcomed Clooney's involvement and support. They got to know each other a year ago while attending a rally to raise awareness about the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan and have stayed in touch. When asked about Clooney at a recent event, Obama broke into a smile, gestured expressively and said simply: "He's a good friend."

I doubt Paris and Brittney are as politically astute as Clooney but I know for a fact that some Republican strategists are already asking them to keep their right-wing opinions to themselves. When the Bush-lovin' Brittney was asked to perform at the last GOP convention, some of the wingnuts went bonkers.

The belly-baring pop star is being courted to attend the Republican convention in New York next week, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, and that has sparked outrage among some conservative groups.

"Through her immature antics, Spears has probably done more to undermine sexual morality than all the misguided legislation introduced in the United States over the last decade," the Illinois Family Institute wrote in an e-mail to members. "It would be the height of hypocrisy for a party that claims to represent wholesome values to celebrate her."

Citing Spears’ "lesbian" kiss with Madonna, her "general immodesty," and her annulled marriage to a childhood friend, the group is urging Republicans to call the GOP’s convention hotline to protest any appearance by Spears.

But whether the wingnuts want Brittney and Paris out there campaigning for McCain or Giuliani or whichever rightist they decide to sacrifice to Hillary-- or if they'd keep them locked up in a closet as tightly as Mitch McConnell keeps his sexual proclivities-- the GOP sure hates outspoken progressive celebrities. Although some of the biggest names in fascist propaganda, like Ann Coulter, Hannity and Scarborough, stayed away last night the Republican Party's Media Research Center had their 20th anniversary gala/hate-fest at Washington's Grand Hyatt. Greedily shoveling the grilled beef down their throats-- eat more, little piggies, eat more-- they were all hootin' and hollerin' as they let their hair down and took off their masks to reveal the monsters lurking beneath. The purpose of the night was to slander progressive media celebrities and independent voices who don't just regurgitate Rovian talking points and recycled tracts from Hitler and Mussolini.

Bottom of the barrel GOP spokesperson, Neal Boortz, for example went after Keith Olbermann, calling him a "void surrounded by a sphincter muscle... You know you've done something right when that footstool attacks you on national TV." Boortz also seems to have a bone to pick with Bryant Gumbel, calling him an "arrogant little jock-sniffer" and an "obtuse mindless person." Oooooooo.

One of the biggest Republican thinkers in the media-- not counting Brittney Spears-- is Wheel of Fortune's Pat Sajek and although he was too almost drunk to make it to the podium on his own, he did manage to accept a large pointy phallus ("The I'm Not a Political Genius But I Play One on TV" Award) for Rosie O'Donnell, saying "I don't know if she has room for this, but I'd be happy to take it over to her and show her where to put it." Hic.

HAVE THE SAUDIS HAD IT WITH BUSH? OR IS IT ALL A LOT OF HOT AIR BETWEEN CROOKS?

The Bush family and the families of their retainers are close business partners with the al-Saud family and the families of the elites that rule Saudi Arabia. It virtually impossible for an outside to penetrate the meaning of the public fandango between these two groups, united in their arrogance, perfidy and their contemptuous and reactionary outlook on everything and everyone outside of their narrowest of worlds. Together they are the 21st Century version of the French aristocracy circa 1785.

In response to some rumblings from Riyadh-- including a peremptorily canceled dinner party the Bushes wanted to throw for King Abdullah-- today's Washington Post has taken a stab at deciphering the state of affairs between the two tribes-- and therefore, bizarrely, our two nations. The poor reporter, Faiza Saleh Ambah, was given just one column. How to explain Saudi Arabia to American readers in one column...

First of all, this is playing out in the context of the Arab League Summit in Riyadh, which the Post curiously forgot to mention. The kings and emirs and military dictators of the 21 Arab states meeting there offered an act-now-or-forever-face-the-consequences deal to Israel: trade the Palestinian land seized in 1967 in return for diplomatic recognition and "permanent peace." The Israeli's, diplomatically, said they weren't interested in an ultimatum but would like to sit and talk about it. That isn't what Abdullah told Bush he wanted the Israelis to reply.

Both the NY Times piece about the summit and the Post piece about the intricacies of the hideous Bush/al-Saud relationship are at the links. Read them but don't expect enlightenment. If you want that, let me suggest starting with Michael Scheuer's book Imperial Hubris: Why The West Is Losing The War on Terror which is, basically, about America's response to the Muslim world. Scheuer worked for the CIA for 22 years. In the preface Scheuer says his book is "overwhelmingly focused on how the last several American presidents have been very ill-served by the senior leaders of the Intelligence Community. Indeed, I resigned from an Agency I love in order to publicly damn the feckless 9/11 Commission, which failed to find any personal failure or negligence among Intelligence Community leaders even though dozens of serving officers provided the commissioners with clear documentary evidence of that failure." His book is also pretty damning of our political elite and our general officer class. It is, more than anything else a massive damning of the handling of U.S. Middle East policies by an utterly clueless and contemptible Bush Regime which, he feels, has put our country in the gravest of dangers. An old Slate from Bastille Day, 2004 has an excellent synopsis if you don't have the time to read the whole book.


So what was Abdullah's outburst all about? Who knows? It's too uncomfortable to appear as close to the Bushes as his family is? Surely. He realizes how lame and what complete losers the Bushes are and wants to distance himself from them now to get ready for what most people see as the inevitability of Hillary-- or whatever comes after this disastrous and incompetent crew? Likely. He wants to act the big shot in front of his primitive buddies and his big shindig? For sure. He's fed up with Bush's dawdling and bungling in Iraq and Israel/Palestine? No doubt. He's trying to figure out a way for his avaricious family business-- the governing of Saudi Arabia-- will not meet the fate that the Bourbons? Probably.

KYLE SAMPSON GETS HIS FIFTEEN MINUTES OF FAME-- MORMON MAFIOSO SHUN THE SPOTLIGHT BUT HE DIDN'T HAVE MUCH CHOICE

I have to ask my friend Jimmy how to spell the Yiddish word hegdish, since my grandma passed away and he's the only person I know who's fluent in Yiddish. And it's the perfect description for what the whole U.S. Attorneys scandal has degenerated into-- between kilograms of contradictory e-mails, lies from every direction-- well, actually all the lies are from one direction-- to Bush scheduling a snap press conference to get the media's attention off Sampson's testimony, and the wingnuts demanding the Senate hearings stop for no reason that even they were able to communicate... A hegdish Jimmy has confirmed is "a disorganized mess."

So let's see what I can make out of this whole... hegdish today. Fox "News" had a cute quote from Kyle Sampson (one of the Rove-controlled Mormon Mafia guys who used to be Gonzo's chief of staff and is the designated fall guy for this and was testifying today): "The decision makers in this case were the attorney general and the president." Ummpphh... that must've hurt but, did you notice, no Rove?

Roll Call says Sampson's testimony, when it wasn't being systematically interrupted by Republicans, is "likely to ratchet up the pressure" on Abu Gonzo to resign. "His former top aide, directly contradicted his old boss in testimony Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee." Questioned by Schumer about Gonzo's assertions that he wasn't involved in any of the discussions about the firings, Sampson said "I don't think it's entirely accurate what he said... I remember discussing with him this process of asking certain U.S. attorneys to resign." Schumer nailed him and John Cornyn's (R-TX) pathetic attempts at a whitewash were laughable and sounded rehearsed.

Oops! Dana Bash on CNN's American Morning thinks those... um.. Inaccuracies are at the root of all the fuss the senators are making. "That is really what is making Democrats and even many Republicans very upset here... the fact that they feel that they got misleading, even flat-out wrong information from top Justice officials about what went on." Well, everyone is supposed to tell the truth to make a democracy work right, right? Especially like the chief law enforcement officer.

CNN had David Igelsias, the fired U.S. Attorney from New Mexico on the air doing commentary. He was excellent and didn't agree at all with Sampson's assertion that "the distinction between 'political' and 'performance-related' reasons for removing a U.S. Attorney is, in my view, largely artificial. A U.S. Attorney who is unsuccessful from a political perspective, either because he or she has alienated the leadership of the Department in Washington or cannot work constructively with law enforcement or other governmental constituencies in the district important to effective leadership of the office, is unsuccessful." Iglesias pointed out that he's never been a U.S. Attorney and that, basically, he didn't have any idea what he was talking about."

I don't think Sampson wanted to come on and say that "the decision makers in this case were the attorney general and the president." He wanted to say-- and this was what was in his prepared remarks distributed to the press in advance: "The decision to ask [the U.S. attys to resign] was the result of an internal process that aggregated the considered, collective judgment of a number of senior Justice Department officials [groupthink]. I would be the first to concede that this process was not scientific, nor was it extensively documented. ... But neither was the process random or arbitrary. Instead, it was a consensus-based process based on input from senior Justice Department officials who were in the best position to develop informed opinions about U.S. Attorney performance."

Republican Senator George Voinovich told the Columbus Dispatch that Gonzales should resign "if politics had a role" in any of this. "This is a serious issue. We need to get to the bottom of it. If what some people say is true, then Gonzales should go." The Regime seems to have two related goals here-- making believe politics wasn't at play and shielding Rove (which is really just one thing, actually). So why, exactly, did Sampson want to fire Patrick Fitzgerald? He says he doesn't know why and that when he suggested it he may have been playing a joke on Harriet Miers. Ha Ha Ha.

HENRY WAXMAN WROTE A LITTLE LETTER TO KARL ROVE TODAY

"GSA" sounds so unsexy. If you missed the story yesterday, maybe Waxman's letter to Rove today will help you to feel the importance.

March 29, 2007
Karl Rove
Assistant to the President,
Deputy Chief of Staff, and Senior Adviser
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. Rove:
Yesterday, the Committee held a hearing into allegations of misconduct at the General Services Administration (GSA). One of the allegations involved a political presentation that your deputy, J. Scott Jennings, made to the GSA Administrator, Lurita A. Doan, and approximately 40 GSA political appointees in the GSA headquarters building on January 26, 2007.
The basic facts of this event are not in dispute. The GSA White House liaison scheduled Mr. Jennings to speak at a meeting that took place on January 26, 2007, at the GSA headquarters building, although some appointees participated by videoconference. After a brief introduction, Mr. Jennings presented a 28-page slide briefing that reviewed the 2006 election results and outlined the Republican Party's top electoral targets in upcoming federal and state elections. This slide presentation included:

* A list of the 20 Democratic House districts the White House views as the most vulnerable to Republican takeover in 2008;
* A list of the 36 Republican House districts the White House views as the most vulnerable to Democratic takeover in 2008; and
* A map showing the Senate seats up for election in 2008 and whether the White House believes Republicans will have to play "defense" or "offense."

After the presentation was over, Ms. Doan asked her staff to discuss how GSA resources could be used to help "our candidates" in the next election.
At the hearing, many questions were raised about the legality and appropriateness of Mr. Jennings's presentation and the discussion that followed it. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service issued an 11-page report that found that both the presentation itself and Ms. Doan's comments could be violations of the federal Hatch Act. According to CRS, the White House presentation alone may cross the line into being an impermissible "political activity" under the Hatch Act when "the sponsor or presenter is closely affiliated/identified with a partisan political campaign, invitations are directed only to 'political' employees of a department, and the objectives and agenda of the program appear to have a partisan slant."
As part of the Committee's investigation into Mr. Jennings's presentation, I ask that you answer the following questions:

* Did you approve of the slides in Mr. Jennings's presentation? Did you approve of Mr. Jennings's participation in this meeting?
* Does the White House Office of Political Affairs or the White House Counsel have a policy addressing when and where White House employees can make political presentations such as the one Mr. Jennings gave at GSA headquarters on January 26, 2007? Please explain the legal authority you believe allows you to make such presentations on federal property during business hours.
* Did Mr. Jennings, you, or any other employee of the White House Office of Political Affairs consult with the White House Counsel or the Office of the Special Counsel about whether delivering this presentation to federal government employees in a government building during business hours violated the Hatch Act or any other rules, policies or procedures?
* Have you, Mr. Jennings, or other employees of the White House Office of Political Affairs given this political briefing or any similar briefing mentioning future elections or candidates on other occasions? Please provide the Committee a list of the dates, times, and locations of any of these presentations at which federal officials were present, whether they occurred on federal property or not, as well as a list of the people and organizations who participated.
* Have you, Mr. Jennings, or other employees of the White House Office of Political Affairs provided Mr. Jennings's PowerPoint presentation or any similar presentation to federal officials mentioning future elections or candidates to people or organizations outside of the White House Office of Political Affairs? Please provide the Committee a list of who received the presentation, as well as the dates, times, and locations the presentation was provided.
* Who prepared the PowerPoint presentation given by Mr. Jennings? Did your office use federal funds to prepare this briefing? If so, please explain the legal authority that you believe allows you to use federal funds to prepare political briefings such as the one Mr. Jennings presented at GSA headquarters on January 26, 2007.
* Why did Mr. Jennings and his staff assistant use private "gwb43.com" accounts rather than their "eop.gov" accounts to correspond with Administrator Doan's office about the PowerPoint presentation?

In addition, I ask that you provide the Committee with any documents and communications relating to (1) the presentation of the PowerPoint presentation or any similar presentation mentioning future elections or candidates to federal officials and (2) the use of federal agencies or resources to help Republican candidates.
I request that you answer the Committee's questions and provide the requested documents by April 13, 2007.
The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is the principal oversight committee in the House of Representatives and has broad oversight jurisdiction as set forth in House Rule X. An attachment to this letter provides additional information on how to respond to the Committee's request.
I will appreciate your cooperation with the Committee's inquiry. If you have any questions about the Committee's request, your staff can contact David Rapallo or David Leviss of the Committee staff at (202) 225-5420.
Sincerely,
Henry A. Waxman
Chairman
Enclosure
cc: Tom Davis
Ranking Minority Member

UPDATE: ON ONE OF THE OTHER ROVE FRONTS, SPECTER KNOWS THESE GUYS WELL-- AND HE WANTS TRANSCRIPTS

Snarlin' Arlen, over on the Senate side, says he's not so concerned about under oath or not under oath; he just wants transcripts. If they can get Rove to testify and he lies, he'll wind up in prison, oath taken or not because, according to Specter, "false official statements carry a five-year jail sentence." He also favors public hearings but he's open to compromising on that if the Regime agrees to transcripts. Arlen knows these characters and their modus operandi well enough to know that the whole exercise is futile without transcripts. "If you do not have a transcript, no one will know for sure what was said... I think a transcript is indispensable, so on that I am in disagreement with the White House."

THE SUNUNU TWO STEP-- DANCING HIMSELF INTO POLITICAL EXTINCTION

If I had to guess on just one Republican most likely to be out looking for a job on K. Street after next year's election it would be John Sununu, the always-agonized reactionary rubber stamp from New Hampshire. (This isn't to say that Norm Coleman, Pete Domenici or Gordon Smith have much chance of hanging on; I just think that-- aside from the open Republican seat in Colorado-- Sununu is the most vulnerable.)

The most obvious reason can be seen by even the most cursory examination of 2006's election results. Outspoken, grassroots progressives, Carol Shea-Porter and Paul Hodes, convincingly ousted the 2 entrenched Republican congressmen (New Hampshire only has two) while the Democratic governor, John Lynch was re-elected in a landslide (72%) and both houses of the state legislature went Democratic. Meanwhile the folks in the Granite State have been reminded every few months-- as another Republican operative is charged, indicted, found guilty and sentenced to prison for helping Rove and Mehlman steal their state's senate race for Sununu in 2002-- what their state's GOP has degenerated into. All this on top of a presidential election year that looks very grim for Republicans, as Fox News is reporting today.

Last year 298,000 NH voters cast their ballots for Lynch, while only 105,000 voted for the Republican. 209,000 voted for Shea-Porter and Hodes while only 188,000 voted for the GOP incumbents (Bradley and Bass). After a narrow NH victory in 2000, Bush lost the state in 2004, Kerry getting 340,000 votes and Bush getting 331,000. In fact, New Hampshire was the only state Bush won in 2000 that he lost as an incumbent. Those trends are all bad news for Sununu who managed to beat Jeanne Shaheen in 2002 only with the help of the massive voter fraud, since proven in several court cases.

On top of that, Sununu now has a voting record that is at variance with his constituents on almost all matters of importance. For all his recent hand-wringing on Iraq, he has been a down-the-line Bush rubber stamp from Day One, voting blindly with the Bush Regime on every one of the 23 Senate roll calls relating to Iraq with one inconsequential exception (and a whole bunch of important votes he managed to miss rather than go on the record for or against). This week he refused to join Republicans Chuck Hagel and Gordon Smith in voting for the legislation the Senate passed that would start the process to get us out of Iraq.

Even leaving Iraq out for a moment, Sununu votes more like some hard right lunatic from Texas or Alabama than like a northeast moderate. His overall voting record is radically right and absolutely abysmal-- unless you too, like Sununu, hate public education, fair taxation, the environment, a woman's right to choice, health care, civil rights, fair justice, and workers' rights.

Is it any wonder that the Rove slide show that was exposed at the GSA hearings yesterday show that the GOP is massively concerned that they will lose Sununu's seat next year? Rove's team was illegally urging the GSA to use its resources to help Sununu remain in the Senate, a clear violation of the Hatch Act.

Most Democrats are dying for Jeanne Shaheen to challenge him next year. She would probably kick his ass from Maine to Vermont, Quebec to Massachusetts. In fact a Republican polling outfit, ARG released polling data today that shows Shaheen is leading Sununu by a wide margin in a hypothetical re-match next year: 44-34%. She hasn't decided whether or not to run.

Yesterday's Boston Globe had a piece on ex-astronaut Jay Buckey who just launched an exploratory committee that could lead to a campaign for the seat. Buckey is currently a professor of medicine at Dartmouth.


UPDATE: NH DOESN'T WANT RUBBER STAMPERS REPRESENTING THEM IN THE U.S. SENATE

And if the pressure on Sununu wasn't bad enough, the New Hampshire legislature is urging him to stop rubber stamping Bush's failed policies and to help end the war. Yesterday the N.H. House voted 214-151 to pass HR 10, the last thing in the world Sununu wanted to see coming out of his state.


UPDATE: SUNUNU TO BUSH-- "PLEASE STAY OUT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE... AND OUR WHOLE MEDIA MARKET"

Desperately fighting to retain his seat-- even though no Democrat has declared yet-- Sununu answered the North Andover Eagle-Tribune editorial board's question about whether or not he wants Bush to campaign for him in an uncharacteristically straightforward fashion: "Not if he's not going to be effective."

DEMOCRATS BECOMING THE NATIONAL SECURITY PARTY AGAIN AS MORE PEOPLE SEE BUSH REGIME AS INCOMPETENT AND UNABLE TO FULFILL EVEN BASIC DUTIES

Yesterday I mentioned how surprised I was-- pleasantly so-- that even a relatively reactionary red-state Democratic freshman like Heath Shuler had hewn to the Iraq War positions worked out by Nancy Pelosi and her team. The New York Times was just as surprised and, they say, so were the Democrats. Oh, not about Shuler specifically, but about the whole Big Tent.

Their aggressiveness and unity on a major foreign-policy challenge to the president is a striking change for a party that has, on many occasions over many years, seemed to be on the defensive on national security issues.

In fact, for much of the post-Vietnam era, the Republican advantage on those issues has been a defining feature of American politics. Many Democrats felt they needed to prove, again and again, that their party was tough enough to defend the nation’s interests-- to fight the notion, often stoked by Republicans, that Democrats were the party of George McGovern and the nuclear freeze.

Democrats feel newly emboldened not because they are unconcerned about security issues but for the opposite reason. America is facing grave threats and Bush and his greed-obsessed rubber stamp Congress have failed miserably. The Bush Regime's utter incompetence-- from allowing our country to be attacked on 9/11 to the failed response in Afghanistan (beyond a great first month) to an unprovoked and catastrophic war and occupation in Iraq-- is the worst thing that has happened to our nation since the Civil War.

Democrats of all stripes are cognizant that the American public has lost faith in Bush and his cronies and his agendas. They understand that the time to step up to the plate is now, for the good of the country.

Former Senator Gary Hart of Colorado, who played a key role in military policy during his years in Congress, said the intellectual challenge facing the Democrats was immense, but so were the potential payoffs.

"What challenges the Democrats now is fashioning-- not just muscular, not just more-- but a more sophisticated approach to security," he said, "and that requires you to comprehend the security needs of the 21st century. That’s the prize to be won, because the Republicans are in huge disarray now."

Democratic Congressional leaders say they are moving in the direction of an alternative foreign policy vision. They added money in the new legislation, for example, for the conflict in Afghanistan. And policy groups in various wings of the party are working on their own proposals.

Ultimately, though, the party’s foreign policy will be defined on the presidential campaign trail, by the candidates and eventually the nominee.

Of course, the Regime, even in it's last spasms, isn't without weapons-- and Bush is bellowing with rage and vowing to veto everything, even to the point of cutting off his own nose to spite his face. "Now, some of them believe that by delaying funding for our troops, they can force me to accept restrictions on our commanders that I believe would make withdrawal and defeat more likely. That’s not going to happen. If Congress fails to pass a bill to fund our troops on the front lines, the American people will know who to hold responsible." He may be in for a very unpleasant surprise when he sees who the people blame. He certainly lost our collective trust long ago. Even the Mormons don't believe anything he says anymore.


As for unity in the Democratic Party, it is fairly powerful, but, obviously not perfect. Ex-Democrat Joe Lieberman, now a spokesperson for the Bush Regime is furiously pushing the Rove talking points and is sounding as delusional as his senile friend McCain. While McCain is misleading Americans about strolling down peaceful Baghdad neighborhoods, Lieberman was writing an OpEd for USAToday claiming everything's coming up roses and invoking-- as Bush and all his minions do incessantly-- General Patraeus as they he were the holy grail.

I hope regular DWT readers will recall last fall when I said that the Democratic Party would be far better off if they took the Senate without a treacherous reactionary like Harold Ford winning a senate seat in Tennessee. One Lieberman is bad enough! Not only did the Democrats win the Senate and not only did the execrable Ford lose his race for the open seat but-- best of all-- Ford's safe blue district went from being represented by an egomaniacal reactionary to having a genuinely progressive Democrat who's on the side of the people on every single issue, in other words, the opposite of Ford.

Why bring Ford up now. Isn't he a Merrill Lynch and DLC shill and out of people's hair finally? Well, he's definitely shilling for Merrill Lynch and the DLC but he's hardly out of everyone's hair. He still fancies himself a force. And he's still carrying water for the forces of reaction and doing all he can to sew Democratic Party disunity and confusion. This morning Washington's far right Moonie Times gets to portray the Democrats as being in disarray because the ex-congressman and bigtime loser decides he needs to shoot his mouth off about how he disagrees with the party on Iraq.

Echoing Karl Rove's GOP talking points, Ford sounds like he's applying for a job with the dying Regime looking to give itself a "bipartisan" face. "I think most Americans want to win, they don't want to see us leave early, and if we leave prematurely, we may create a broader set of conflicts and invite a bigger problem in that region than before leaving."

MR. ROGERS' McCAIN'S NEIGHBORHOOD

I hope you watched yesterday's video du jour of John McCain flat out lying-- or else proving the frighteningly advanced state of his dementia-- on CNN with Wolf Blitzer. The Straight Talk Express is now a runaway freight train filled with nuts-- or piloted by one. Claiming that there's "significant progress," McCain told a radio audience-- and then reiterated the exact same thing on TV-- that "There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today." That's a)- just not true and b)- a scary thing for a candidate for president to say because he's either consciously lying or utterly clueless and delusional.

Or does he know a neighborhood in Baghdad that no one else does? (It sure ain't the Green Zone, not that that's a neighborhood anyway. McCain who once was a hair-breath away from switching parties, was back on CNN today at first defending his positions and then, confronted with evidence to the contrary, denying they were his positions! Watch the video of a doddering and deceitful old fool committing political suicide.

Other Republicans are abandoning McCain's-- and Cheney's-- hopeless and confused position on Iraq as fast as they can. Our old friend Dr. Steven Porter, who is running for Congress against long-time Iraq War advocate Phil English (PA-03) has been tying to figure out where exactly English stands on the war. English has been the absolute perfect example of the ultimate Bush rubber stamp. Of the 44 Iraq-related votes between October 10, 2002 and May 25, 2005, English voted with Bush 44 times. His voting record is an abomination; no one in the entire Congress has a worse one. Now, though, English is feeling the heat and flipping around like a live trout on hot skillet. Here's what Porter had to say last week:

Now that he is drawing heat from Move-on, our Congressman, Republican incumbent Phil English, representing the beleaguered 3rd district of Pennsylvania, has seen fit to try to con us about his Iraq flip-flops.

English's position on the war has as many twists and turns as a corkscrew.  When Bush was riding high in the polls, nothing was wrong with Iraq, and English supported it-- lies and all-- from day one.

Then, as Bush's position began to crumble, in order to avoid the political fall-out, English began to distance himself from the President by equivocating about the war before the 2006 elections and by siding against the "surge" of troops afterward.

Now, no doubt under orders from the Republican leadership, he refuses to support the bill which might lead to bringing our troops home.

The flip-flops are, of course, purely political. It is doubtful that Mr. English has any reasoned position on the foreign policy he is directed to support, and if he has, he has never articulated it. He is just another Washington politician scrambling to make himself look good and to keep in favor with his party leadership.

By comparison, I opposed the invasion of Iraq from the get-go and did so because my study of history compelled me to reject Bush's arguments for the war. It was clear there were no weapons of mass destruction, that Iraq posed no threat to the U.S., that Saddam-- evil as he was-- had no link to the 9/11 terrorists or to Al-Qaeda, and that the tribal conflicts between Shiite, Sunni, and Kurd were centuries in the making. It was also clear to me that the invasion was far more about oil and money for the likes of Halliburton than the cause of democracy. I have never wavered from these conclusions.

Moreover, I believe that the only viable solution to the mess Mr. Phil and his brainless President have created is to seek a divided Iraq with Kurdish, Shiite, and Sunni autonomous regions and with each sharing equally in the oil revenues which have evidently been "divvied up" by the likes of Exxon, Shell, BP, and Chevron through the production-sharing agreements in the new Iraqi constitution.

It is time to send English and his like-minded Congress men and women packing.  It is also time for the press to stop lauding him for his flip-flops and to get on board with a program which will end this horrible war.

Maybe McCain could take Phil English on that stroll through the magical Baghdad neighborhood-- or maybe he'd be too big a target even for the delusional McCain.

DOBSON TRYING TO NIP THOMPSON IN THE BUD?

The Pope of the GOP-- or the Lord High Executioner of the Radical Right Department of Fake Religiosity-- James Dobson, wants Newt, Newt, Newt. With actor Fred Thompson surging in the polls, and looking like a Republican that all the factions that hate the crossdresser, the senile double-talker and the Mormon can finally get behind, Dobson put the kibosh on his candidacy today.

Focus on the Family founder James Dobson appeared to throw cold water on a possible presidential bid by former Sen. Fred Thompson while praising former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is also weighing a presidential run, in a phone interview Tuesday.

"Everyone knows he's conservative and has come out strongly for the things that the pro-family movement stands for," Dobson said of Thompson. "[But] I don't think he's a Christian; at least that's my impression," Dobson added, saying that such an impression would make it difficult for Thompson to connect with the Republican Party's conservative Christian base and win the GOP nomination.

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Thompson, took issue with Dobson's characterization of the former Tennessee senator. "Thompson is indeed a Christian," he said. "He was baptized into the Church of Christ."

Dobson, who is known to have made his deal with the Devil to bring the hated and hypocritical and perverted Gingrich into the White House, dug in his heels. Through a flack he lectured Thompson about what it means to be a Dobson-approved Christian. "We," he emphasized imperiously and in a way I doubt the all-embracing Jesus would ever approve of, "use that word-- "Christian"-- to refer to people who are evangelical Christians." Oh dear.

Dobson who had already vetoed McCain, says he doesn't believe that "the current excitement over Giuliani will continue" and that many evangelicals "would find it difficult" to support Romney "because of his Mormonism." Can you believe that there are people who actually pay attention to their monstrosity from the bowels of Satan? (No, not Romney; DOBSON!)

WHY ISN'T BRETT TOLMAN IN PRISON YET?

There may be legitimate reasons why Brett Tolman isn't in prison; I'm not sure. But there are certainly none that would explain why he is still the U.S. Attorney for Utah. Yes, another U.S. Attorney-- but one, unlike crimebusters Carol Lam, David Iglesias, John McKay, etc-- that wasn't fired. In fact, if not for Mr. Tolman none of them would have been fired. But that goes back to his old job when he was a staffer for Arlen Specter at the time when Specter was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Tolman was a counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee when they were reauthorizing the so-called "Patriot Act" in 2005-06. He reported to Snarlin' Arlen-- or at least that is what Specter believed. Specter was unaware of the Bush Regime's tight-knit "Mormon Mafia" operated by Karl Rove at the heart of the U.S. government. He learned the hard way.

One night, before passage of the bill, Tolman surreptitiously inserted a paragraph into the legislation that basically removed Senate oversight and approval of replacements for U.S. Attorneys. Tolman didn't ask Specter and didn't tell Specter or, as far as we know, any other senators. He just snuck it into the bill and none of them knew they were voting for that provision. Is that embarrassing, or what? I think so. And I think it plays a role in why the senators have been pretty mum on this episode. And what made it worse is that the Senate unanimously approved Bush's nomination of Tolman, soon after... as U.S. Attorney for Utah!

When Specter finally did discover he had been duped by Tolman and tried to get to the bottom of it, all he was told was that Tolman had acted on behalf of the Justice Department! No names. The question remains, did Rove tell Tolman to do it directly or did he use Gonzales as his messenger boy?


Today it was revealed that the Saudis have turned their backs on BushCo. That leaves one base of support, the Mormons, right? Well... not so fast. Utah may be the reddest of the red states-- and the lowest information state anywhere-- but even there things are turning around a bit. A poll in the Salt Lake City Tribune has some bad news for the Bush Regime. Like the Saudis, the Mormons have about had it with Bush's disastrous war and catastrophic occupation of Iraq.

In the survey, just 44 percent of those identifying themselves as Mormon said they backed Bush's war management. That's a level considerably higher than Bush gets from Utah's non-Mormon population and the nation at large, but it's also a 21 percentage point drop from just five months earlier.... Such abrupt moves in group opinion are uncommon. Pollsters say numbers generally move gradually, unless "spooked" by something.

Rove, who went to high school and college in Utah and first got into political campaigning working for Senator Wallace Bennett (R-UT), operates a virtual "Mormon Mafia" out of his White House office, recently uncovered by our own Karen Allen while she was investigating Kyle Sampson, another in Rove's web, for Down With Tyranny.

Oddly, after Tolman had rendered his little service to Rove at the Judiciary Committee, it appeared that Rove was backing Sampson for the U.S. Attorney gig-- although with Rove, appearances are almost always deceptive. It was Utah Senator Orrin Hatch who was behind Tolman, a protege of his, and Hatch seems to have come to terms with Rove.

A few weeks ago Karen Tumulty flagged this in Time as a potential problem for Gonzales and the Bush Regime-- twice. No one seems to have bitten. It's difficult for me to understand-- beyond their own embarrassment-- why senators, particularly those on the Judiciary Committee, have failed to haul Brett Tolman's ass in and find out who exactly gave him the order to insert the secret paragraph into the Patriot Act in the dead of night. Once that is cleared up, I believe the rest of Purge-Gate will fall into place.


ANOTHER DoJ DOCUMENT DUMP SHOWS MORMON MAFIA MEMBERS UNDERMINING OUR ENTIRE SYSTEM OF JUSTICE

Kyle Sampson, another of Rove's pet Morman Mafioso, was the one who misled Congress about the role Rove played in the firing and replacing of 8 (or more) U.S. Attorneys and thoroughly politicizing the U.S. justice system. The DoJ is calling Sampson's willful and premeditated deception a case where officials "may have provided inaccurate and incomplete information."

PROGRESSIVES WILL NOT USE McCONNELL'S HYPOCRITICAL ANTI-GAY STANCE WHILE HE'S IN THE CLOSET AGAINST HIM IN ATTACK ADS

With Kentuckians growing more and more restless with their senator's role in perpetuating the Bush Regime's pointless "Stay The Course" agenda in Iraq, Mitch McConnell is facing a tough re-election battle next year. This has been exacerbated as it becomes more and more known that he has been a closeted gay man for decades while pushing an anti-gay agenda. He must be breathing a sign of relief today as the progressive group Americans United for Change has made its plans known that they will be tackling McConnell only on his role in advancing the Bush Regime's war policies.

They are launching a six-figure television ad campaign in Kentucky during the April congressional recess that will leave no one in Kentucky unclear about Senate Minority Leader McConnell's role as the chief  obstructionist when it comes to most of Congress' desire to move away from the unpopular Stay the Course stance of the Bush Regime. The spot, which makes no allusions to McConnell's sexual status or the fact that he was kicked out of the military for molesting young soldiers, primarily show him making false statements on the Senate floor about progress in Iraq. The statements are contrasted to hard reality-- statistics and footage of American war casualties and chaos in Iraq.

"The fact is we're already on the road to victory in Iraq," McConnell is quoted as saying. Less than a third of Americans still buy this line of crap. At the end, the ad urges voters to call McConnell's office and, "Tell Mitch McConnell: Stop blocking change on Iraq." Take a look:




UPDATE: McCONNELL, BUSH, CHENEY, McCAIN... PEOPLE ARE TIRED OF THEIR PATHETIC SONG AND DANCE ROUTINE. LESS THAN A THIRD BELIEVE A WORD THEY SAY

McConnell and his pals can bleat about how the war is going well, how victory is just around the corner, how you could stroll happily down a street in some lovely unnamed Baghdad neighborhood arm in arm with Bill Bennett, how Iraq is some kind of progressive young democracy fighting for the right to have WalMarts... but the jig is up.

A new Gallup poll shows that only 29 percent of Americans believe the Iraq escalation is making the situation better. Another 43 percent say the escalation is "not making much difference," and 22 percent say it is making conditions in Iraq worse.

In addition, fully 80 percent of Americans "endorse a requirement that U.S. troops meet strict readiness criteria before being deployed to Iraq," while 60 percent "favor a timetable for withdrawing all U.S. troops from Iraq by fall 2008."

McConnell is a symbol for all that is wrong with an out-of-touch politician who has been in Washington entirely too long. It's time for him to be working directly for K Street lobbyists and stop pretending he's representing the people of Kentucky.

HOW ROVE AND THE BUSH REGIME PERVERTS ALL FACETS OF THE GOVERNMENT FOR NARROW POLITICAL PURPOSES-- ILLEGALLY

What do Karl Rove's plans to attack Democratic congressmen have to do with the General Services Administration? The politicization of the Department of Justice is apparently not the only department the GOP has been improperly politicizing. Today Henry Waxman's House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform had another GOP hack in front of them as a witness, Lurita Doan, of the General Services Administration. (Doan is on CREW's list of the most corrupt administrators in the Bush Regime.)

Freshman Congressman Bruce Braley (D-IA) asks the key question: "Can you tell us what, if anything, these slides have to do with the GSA's core purpose of procuring supplies and managing federal buildings?" Doan punted and blustered and pleaded ignorance. Braley asked her another question that should be on the mind of every tax-payer who doesn't like seeing his or her money wasted (stolen) for partisan purposes: "Your comment was 'How can we use different GSA projects, building opening and the like, to further aid other Republicans?' and 'How can we use GSA to help our candidates in the next election?'" It's a 10 minute video that will show you how the GOP has been perverting our government for their own purposes. What is the penalty for opposing the Hatch Act?



Christy at Firedoglake is live-blogging this and it appears that the Republicans on the committee-- especially those kooks Burton and Issa-- have degenerated into the only defense they know: Blame everything on Bill Clinton's penis.


UPDATE: HOW ROVE'S MIND WORKS-- THE SLIDES-- AND WHICH REPUBLICANS ROVE THINKS ARE RETIRING

I know it is hard to read the slides in the video. I managed to obtain a pdf file of them so you can examine Rove's strategy at your leisure. The congressmen and women he was urging the GSA bureaucrats to help him target are (in order of vulnerability):

Lampson (TX-22)
Mahoney (FL-16)
McNerney (CA-11)
Space (OH-18)

Let me break here for a moment. Look at the first 4 priorities-- winning back the seats of Republicans who are disgraced felons: racketeer and money-launderer Tom DeLay, child molester Mark Foley, "Mr. Pollution" Dick Pombo, and bribetaker Bob Ney. Something tells me the voters in these four districts have had about enough of Republican hypocrisy. Back to Rove's list of targets:

Hill (IN-09)
Carney (PA-10) (bring back The Choker???)
Murphy (PA-08)
Boyda (KS-02)
Sestak (PA-07)
Ellsworth (IN-08)
Shuler (NC-11)
Rodriguez (TX-23)
Kagen (WI-08)
Marshall (GA-08)
Donnelly (IN-02)
Barrow (GA-12)
Altmire (PA-04)
Hall (NY-19)
Gillibrand (NY-20)
Herseth (SD-AL)

Another slide shows which seats Rove feels the Democrats are most likely to take in 2008 and he was asking the GSA to help him defend those incumbents. Their most vulnerable: Gerlach (PA), Bachmann (the sneaky puker- MN), Hayes (NC), Wilson (NM-- rotflmao), Musgrave (CO), Roskam (IL), Shays (CT), Mean Jean Schmidt (OH), Drake (VA), Cubin* (WY), Doolittle (CA), Porter (NV), Walsh (NY), Pryce** (OH), Kuhl** (NY), Ferguson (NJ), Knollenberg* (MI), Young* (Bridge to Nowhere), Galleghy* (CA), McKeon* (CA), Lewis* (CA), Miller** (CA), Hunter* (CA), Castle* (DE), Young* (FL), Kirk (IL), Hastert* (IL), Lewis (KY), Jindal* (LA), Bartlett* (MD), Ehlers (MI), Walberg (MI), Myrick* (NC), Regula* (OH), Dent (PA) and Davis* (VA). The names with the single asterisk are congressmen Rove believes are sure or likely to not run. The double asterisks are DWT additions to the "may not seek re-election" category.

HOW DO YOU GET TO BE NOT BE AN AMBASSADOR?

It has nothing to do with your knowledge of the country you're being assigned to and more often than not-- especially with the 85% of small countries"-- nothing to do with any kind of objective qualifications. Instead it has to do with the political contributions you've made to the political party of the president doing the nominating. It's just the way it is and both parties play the game and routinely confirm each other's nominees. But hold the presses.

A few weeks ago we brought up the case of Swift Boat financier Sam Fox, beloved of Rove, Bush, Cheney and Lieberman. Lieberman took him under his wing and strutted into the Senate Judiciary Committee for Bush and pretty much said, "If you like me, you'll love my boy Sam." Today the Bush Regime, under mounting criticism for such an egregiously partisan nomination-- of someone who is known for one thing and one thing only: being a smear merchant-- withdrew the nomination. Chris Dodd led the way on the battle although, no doubt, the senators who talked Bush into withdrawing the nomination had John Kerry, the victim of the vicious and deceitful Fox-financed attacks, in mind. I'm sure the Belgians are mighty relieved that their country isn't being used as a dumping group for Neocon garbage.

Fox, no doubt, is confused and probably having trouble comprehending the difference between making a legitimate campaign contribution to a political candidate and financing a political smear machine. At least he'll have something to think about-- back in Missouri. Isn't this clown also financing the Irving Libby (AKA- "Scooter") Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free campaign-- along with Republicrooks Ed Meese, Marty Peretz, Fred Malek, and Bill Bennett?


UPDATE: BUSH IS PISSED OFF THAT HE COULDN'T ROUND UP THE VOTES TO SHOVE FOX DOWN THE SENATE'S THROAT

Think Progress has the C-Span video that shows, again, how pathetic the whole Bush operation is these days.

HEATH SHULER TURNING OUT BETTER THAN I THOUGHT HE WOULD BE

Rahm Emanuel's Heath Shuler hasn't been half as bad as I expected him to be. In fact, his voting record, while one of the least progressive of the freshman class (along with Donnelly, Ellsworth, Carney, Space and Altmire-- all of whom have been worse than Shuler), isn't terrible. Some progressives in NC-11 wish they had someone with values more in-line with our own but on the big votes (with a few exceptions like stemm cell research) he hasn't been abandoning the Democrats so far. The jury's still out but it doesn't look like he'll be another Jim Marshall, Gene Taylor or Dan Boren. Last week, for example, he voted with most Democrats to start the process of ending the war in Iraq. He explained his reasoning in an OpEd in a local newspaper:

Earlier this week, we entered the fifth year of the war in Iraq. Throughout that time this Congress has provided the President with all the resources needed to wage this war. However, this body failed to provide any of the oversight he needed.

Today, this Congress will correct that lack of oversight, while still providing our troops the funding they need and our military leaders the flexibility they require.Today we say an open-ended commitment to this war is no longer acceptable. We say that we will no longer grant the President a blank check.

The war in Iraq has already lasted longer than World War I, World War II, and the Civil War. Continuing this war in the same manner with no accountability from the Administration or requirements on the Iraqi government is unacceptable.

While the NRCC appears to be searching for a new candidate to challenge him, the problem is ole Charlie Taylor. All of the names being floated are so used to deferring to the corrupt old autocrat that no one will jump into the race until he says he's not going to try to regain his seat. And he's not ready to say one way or the other yet. He would like the seat back-- it was very profitable for him-- but he wants to figure out which way the wind is blowing before he commits himself.

Scrutiny Hooligans is keeping tabs on what the GOP plans to do about Shuler next year. They even went to the trouble of transcribing a hilarious resolution from the Buncombe County Republican Party Convention urging Taylor to run again. God only knows what they must have been serving at that party!!

WHAT HAS JOHN McCAIN BEEN SMOKING?

Most people I know claim that McCain has no chance of being nominated by the GOP for the presidency. The far right loons who control the party detest him, even though he's blown every single one of them multiple times in the last 4 years. Conventional wisdom is that he's too old, his incipient senility too apparent, even for desperate Republicans to go with him. Besides, everybody loves Rudy. Right? Well, they do... now. But the worry, of course, is that if Rudy becomes the nominee and then gets exposed as a cross-dresser, a womanizer, a chid abuser, an advocate of gay rights, abortion rights, liberal judges and gun control... his wipeout in the general election will drag scores of local and state Republicans down the toilet with him. So, I'm sticking with McCain as the sacrificial pig to be  sliced and diced on the alter of Hillary late next year in what I expect to be the biggest Republican electoral defeat since 1964.

Of course, there are no sure things in politics and there's something that could easily derail my prediction: McCain could go publicly bananas before the primary causing Republicans to turn to a dark horse like actor Fred Thompson or even serial philanderer Newt Gingrich. And, as a matter of fact, it looks like McCain's handlers let gramps out of his cage without his meds today and yesterday.

Yesterday he was on Bill Bennett's right wing propaganda broadcast. He's been running all over telling anyone who will listen that everything is going splendidly in Iraq. He's beyond what we used to hear about Vietnam and the light at the end of the tunnel. "There are neighborhoods in Baghdad," said the crazy old coot, "where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today."

Well, let's hope to God he takes Bennett with him for a stroll. While he was saying it, in fact, the one "neighborhood" in Baghdad where it's been considered relatively safe, the Green Zone, since it's heavily guarded, fortified by the U.S. and no Iraqi gets in or out without proper documents, experienced a massive suicide bombing leaving the Deputy Prime Minister in the hospital and 9 of his companions dead. Maybe McCain meant Sadr City?

He continued his willful ad bizarre delusionalism today. John Amato's got it at Crooks and Liars, first McCain's load of crack and then a CNN reporter in Baghdad disputing every word the double-talking Arizona senator was babbling on TV. The reporter absolutely called McCain a clueless liar. Watch that video. Here's a partial transcript from Michael Ware in Baghdad, on the air moments after McCain told Wolf Blitzer that General Patraeus rides around Baghdad in an unarmed car every day and that Blitzer needs to be brought up to speed with reality of he thinks it would be dangerous for McCain (and Bennett) to go for a stroll in town:

Well, I'd certainly like to bring Senator McCain up to speed, if he ever gives me the opportunity. And if I have any difficulty hearing you right now, Wolf, that's because of the helicopter circling overhead and the gun battle that is blazing just a few blocks down the road.

Is Baghdad any safer?

Sectarian violence-- one particular type of violence-- is down. But none of the American generals here on the ground have anything like Senator McCain's confidence.

I mean, Senator McCain's credibility now on Iraq, which has been so solid to this point, has now been left out hanging to dry.

To suggest that there's any neighborhood in this city where an American can walk freely is beyond ludicrous. I'd love Senator McCain to tell me where that neighborhood is and he and I can go for a stroll.

And to think that General David Petraeus travels this city in an unarmed Humvee. I mean in the hour since Senator McCain has said this, I've spoken to some military sources and there was laughter down the line. I mean, certainly, the general travels in a Humvee. There's multiple Humvees around it, heavily armed. There's attack helicopters, predator drones, sniper teams, all sorts of layers of protection.

So, no, Senator McCain is way off base on this one... No way on earth can a westerner, particularly an American, stroll any street of this capital of more than five million people.

I mean, if al Qaeda doesn't get wind of you, or if one of the Sunni insurgent groups don't descend upon you, or if someone doesn't tip off a Shia militia, then the nearest criminal gang is just going to see dollar signs and scoop you up. Honestly, Wolf, you'd barely last 20 minutes out there.

I don't know what part of Neverland Senator McCain is talking about when he says we can go strolling in Baghdad.

Today the poor man, sinking deeper and deeper into senility and delusionalism took time off from his busy fundraising schedule to show up at the United States Senate. He decided to show up to vote for the doomed Cochran Amendment that would have stripped out the Democrats' proposal to fund the troops and start redeploying out of Iraq next year. Muttering about the Vietnam War and the Korean War and that we might have to keep soldiers in Iraq for as many as 50 years, McCain tried using the Rove tactic that has worked so well for George "29% approval" Bush. "Failure is genocide. Failure means we come back. Failure means they follow us home." Someone needs to take him home, give him some warm milk and his meds and tuck him in.

(Photo courtesy of Jesus' General)

THE TOP 10 POLITICAL VIDEOS OF ALL TIME

You know I'll take every opportunity I get to remind people about the flower of the Republican Party, George Macacawitz Allen. So when my pals at PoliticsTV.com launched their new program that starts out with the Top 10 Political Videos of All Time, I knew I had to share:

FORGET THE iRACK AND FOCUS ON THE iRAN

If the disaster Bush has gotten us into in Iraq is perplexing you-- I mean, how could our own president who's supposed to be on our side have led us down this catastrophic course-- here's a quick little video that should clear it all up for you:

DAVID STOCKMAN, THE POSTERBOY FOR THE WINGNUTS' VOODOO ECONOMICS IS INDICTED FOR FRAUD

When it was first announced last September that former Reagan Budget Director David Stockman was being investigated for crooked dealing, it should have come as a surprise to no one at all. What, afterall, do crooked dealers do besides deal crookedly? In public life Stockman was always a flim-flam man, selling what Bush's father called Voodoo Economics, another Republican scheme to soft pedal their ultimate and undying ambition to make the rich richer and the rest of us... slaves. His record as Budget Director was one of abysmal failure. He spoke in terms of idealism but he didn't try to prevent his budget cuts from falling disproportionately on the poor; the GOP's wealthy paymasters proved too powerful to defeat-- not that anyone tried. Ultimately, Stockman failed to achieve budget cuts of any kind sufficient to reverse a trend toward growing deficits fed by the Reagan administration's tax cuts for the rich. Bush and the pseudo-economists he's brought into his Regime couldn't wait to take up this mantle.

Yesterday Stockman was indicted "on charges of conspiracy, securities fraud and obstruction of justice. Stockman, 60, who faces the prospect of three decades in prison, is accused of defrauding investors and banks during his stewardship" of bankrupt MI auto-parts maker Collins & Aikman.

At some point there will be enough Republican ex-congressmen in jail, no doubt awaiting pardon, to merit, at minimum, a wing in a prison, if not an entire facility. I'm sure Stockman will feel right at home with fellow far right nut cases-- also with sticky fingers-- like Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, Tom DeLay, Jerry Lewis, Gary Miller, John Doolittle. Mr. "Trickle-Down Economics" was elected to Congress from Michigan when he was just 30 years old. He was a radical zealot for every extremist right-wing notion that came sailing down the pike. Four years later, Reagan appointed him Director of the Office of Budget and Management where he made absurd pie in the sky projections based on ideology and faith in right wing chicanery. "Reagan chastised his young budget chief [the infamous "walk to the woodshed"] for expressing doubts to a Washington Post editor about massive defense spending, tax cuts and the resulting deficits at the same time he was selling the plan to the public and the Congress. The article threw Washington into uproar and led to Stockman being jettisoned by the Reaganites. He then made his way into the private sector where he has continued a career of dishonesty and manipulation-- except this time with the purpose of lining his own pockets.

COCHRAN AMENDMENT DEFEATED. SENATE WILL PUSH FOR AN END TO BUSH'S WAR IN IRAQ

Earlier today I was chewing on my ankle worried that the Democrats would fail to stop Cochran's amendment to the supplemental spending will which would have stripped out the language directing Bush to start redeploying American troops by next year. The Republicans failed to muster a majority and it went down to defeat 50-48. Hagel voted with the Democrats, calling for an end to the Republican strategy of obfuscation and obstructionism. On the Senate floor, Hagel used language he usually reserves for the Sunday talk shows: "The cost of combat in Iraq in terms of American lives, dollars, and world standing has been devastating for our country. The American people are demanding that we develop a bipartisan consensus for an honorable and responsible exit strategy from Iraq... If we fail to build a bipartisan foundation for an exit strategy, America will pay a high price for this blunder, one that we will have difficulty recovering from in the years ahead." Unfortunately, it wasn't that bipartisan. Hagel was joined by endangered Oregon Republican Gordon Smith while Mark Pryor (D-AR) and former-Democrat Joe Lieberman (I-CT) voted with the Republicans. God only knows what Reid promised Ben Nelson (D-NE) to get him to vote with the Democrats!

Russ Feingold put the vote in perspective: "Today marks an important step toward ending the war in Iraq. For the first time, the U.S. Senate will pass binding legislation requiring the President to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. While this is long overdue, it is a big step in the right direction and it brings us closer to ending our involvement in this disastrous war."

Republicans are counting on Bush to veto the bill once the differences with the House get ironed out in conference committee. But with the Pentagon screaming that the soldiers need the support in Iraq now will Bush fly in the face of the Senate, the House and the vast majority of the American people and cut off support for our troops? Would Bush do that just to play political games? Will he put our troops in jeopardy?


WINGNUTS RENDING THEIR CLOTHES AND TEARING OUT THEIR HAIR

I don't usually link to far right websites but this one was too funny to pass up. They have no brains and no capacity to think beyond what Limbaugh and Hannity read them from Rove's daily talking point faxes. It's kind of sad, especially the part about how they're starting to realize what a laughing stock they are: "I am sick and tired of this laughingly-termed 'Conservative Movement.' We all suck at it, it's as much a movement as the one those who take Ex-Lax might experience, and it needs to change or go away so we can continue to shrivel and hide in our dark little closets away from the bright sunshine that IS the Progressive/Liberal activist movement..."

WHY DON'T THE CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS JUST END THE WAR? THEYRE THE MAJORITY, RIGHT?

Why can't the Democrats just vote to end the war? They have a majority now, right? Leaving aside the meaning of a narrow majority and what it takes to override a veto, let's look at the Democrats' big tent in regard to the war. It includes people like Barbara Boxer and Russ Feingold and Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd on the one hand and other Democrat who are coming from an entirely different perspective. As Reid and Durbin look for the votes needed to pass even a modest bill that would ease us out of war next year-- a bill that is giving anti-war advocates fits-- he might have more luck with wavering Republicans like Chuck Hagel (R-NE), Gordon Smith (R-OR) and Susan Collins (R-ME) than with red state reactionary Democrats like Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Mark Pryor (D-AR).

Reid's office says the vote will be "very close." Senate Republican Conference Chairman Jon Kyl (R-AZ), a hard right fanatic and warmonger, said early vote counts by Minority Whip Lott had made Republicans "fairly confident" of being able to strip the language calling for withdrawal from the $121 billion-plus defense spending package.

Over the weekend Hagel-- who voted to stay the course previously-- seemed to say he's finally finished with the rubber stamp two-step he's been doing. It could be hot air-- since the senator seems confused and perpetually on the brink-- but he did say that he "will not continue supporting with my vote the status quo." That would be a first.

Pryor, who's voted with the Republicans on this in the past-- and who is up for re-election next year and apparently can't read polls that show his constituents are not satisfied with the status quo-- seems to be leaning towards supporting McConnell's position-- "stay the course"-- again. Yesterday he offered an amendment that would require the development of a classified campaign plan spelling out "strategic and operational benchmarks and redeployment dates of United States troops from Iraq as those benchmarks are met."

Ben Nelson is an even tougher nut to crack. He won't be facing the voters again for 5 years but he's a reactionary through and through and he votes more frequently with the GOP on substantive matters than he does with Democrats. To try to win over Pryor and Nelson Democrats have reworded the language to make the Aug. 31 deadline for withdrawing most combat troops from Iraq a "goal." Soon the bill will be so meaningless that Cheney would be able to vote for it.

And while the Democratic Senate majority we elected last November-- including Ben Nelson (just look at that Republican voting record)-- proves itself incapable of carrying out the popular will of the people, not just of Democrats, the base of who votes for them, but of all the people, we get an ill-times fundraising letter from the DSCC today. Did you see it?


It's called the "Nightmare Scenario." Before I opened it I wondered if it was going to be a reference to Joe Lieberman, the reactionary Bush die-hard who the DSCC conspired to re-elect last year over the Democratic nominee, Ned Lamont. No, rather than look inward at their own failings they want to blame us for the precarious situation they find themselves in now. That and ask for more money.

One seat. That's all it would take to flip Senate control back to the GOP in 2008.
And once again, Oklahoma Republican Senator James Inhofe - who has called global warming the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the America people -" would assume the chairmanship of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
That would only be the tip of the iceberg. The very same Republicans who rubber-stamped George Bush's abuses of presidential power, who allowed military contractors to swindle American taxpayers and who looked the other way as Donald Rumsfeld's disastrous Iraq war plan unfolded would retake the reins of crucial Senate committees handling Intelligence, Armed Services and Energy.
We can't let it happen. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) has one mission and one mission only: to preserve and expand the Democratic Senate majority.
We're closing out our crucial first quarter of the 2008 election cycle and absolutely must get off to a strong start. This early fundraising will help us recruit the very best candidates and serve as a barometer for the talking heads to judge our early momentum.
To reach our ambitious target, we need $300,000 by midnight March 31. Our Democratic Senators know how vital this goal is and that is why they will match every single dollar you give. Can I count on you?

Count on me? To help prop up and re-elect someone like Ben Nelson? Oh, that was last year. How about Mark Pryor? If I donate to the DSCC will my money go to re-elect Mark Pryor so he can vote to extend the war in Iraq forever?

DSCC, you can count on me. You can count on me to say "Screw you, asshole!" You can count on me to contribute to any progressive Democrat who challenges any reactionary incumbent. This year the DSCC's biggest and costliest battle will be to hold on to the seat of unpopular reactionary senator Mary Landrieu whose voting record sucks-- unless you love corporate subsidies and hate the environment and think working men and women should have limited rights. And if you're with Bush on Iraq... she's your gal. DSCC, you can count on me to support-- directly-- any progressive Democrat who supports the principles and the values of the Democratic Party and who doesn't undermine them. I do it here.

HOUSE PASSES THE BILL TO RESTORE A LITTLE BIT MORE OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT ERODED BY THE BUSH REGIME

Did you know Congress works at night? When I got home after seeing a film I saw that the House had passed H.R. 580 (Interim Appointment of U.S. Attorneys), a bill similar to the one passed in the Senate last week. The bills repeal a provision giving the Attorney General the right to hire U.S. Attorneys without Senate approval. It was stealthily slipped into the Patriot Act by one of the Mormon Mafia, a Bush hack named Brett Tolman who was later appointed to a U.S. Attorney job in Utah with the use of the surreptitious paragraph no one knew about he snuck into the bill while he was working for Arlen Specter on the staff of the Judiciary Committee. (I don't understand why he isn't in prison.)

H.R. 580 restores the process for temporarily replacing U.S. Attorneys to what it was before the Bush Regime illegally changed it. The Attorney General would be empowered to appoint someone to serve up to 120 days. If the Senate did not confirm a permanent replacement by then, the chief judge of the federal district would be able to appoint a temporary replacement to serve until the Senate acted. The bill includes a provision to prevent the Regime from using the Vacancies Act to allow the Attorney General to make continuous interim appointments of U.S. Attorneys and it applies to the interim U.S. Attorneys who are currently serving in the place of the eight dismissed U.S. Attorneys and openings that were created when the eight U.S. Attorneys were forced to resign by Gonzales and Rove. 

Only 2 Republicans-- Hagel and Bond-- voted against the bill in the Senate and even Bush has raised the white flag on this one. But in the House tonight, where the overwhelming vote (329-78) included all Democrats and most Republicans, 78 die-hard wingnuts-- the worst of the worst-- dug in their obstructionist heels and refused to vote for this. What is wrong with these people? Do you want to guess which loons and kooks voted no? If you read DWT with any regularity you will recognize many from our Hall of Shame: like Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO), Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA), the sneaky puker Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Mean Jean Schmidt (R-OH), Joe Barton (R-TX), Robin Hayes (R-NC), Mary Bono (R-CA), Blunt/Boehner (R-MO/OH), C.W. Bill Young (R-FL), Doug Lamborn (R-CO), John Doolittle (R-CA), John Kline (R-MN), Patrick McNutcase (R-NC), Denny Hastert (R-IL), Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Steve Buyer (R-IN), Eric Cantor (R-VA)... not a single patriotic American among the lot of them-- and that's not even half.

Many of the Republicans, especially the extreme ideologues like the ones named above, don't take this whole thing seriously. The American people do.

Americans overwhelmingly support a congressional investigation into White House involvement in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, and they say President Bush and his aides should answer questions about it without invoking executive privilege.

In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday-Sunday, respondents said by nearly 3-to-1 that Congress should issue subpoenas to force White House officials to testify.

WHEN REPUBLICANS HAVE NOTHING... THEY SEND IN THE CLOWNS AND WHEN PUTNAM, WESTMORELAND AND McNUTCASE ARE "UNAVAILABLE," THEY DIG UP A LAMAR SMITH

If the Republicans have something spurious they want to get out-- a far-fetched or outrageous distraction, say-- and it's too ridiculous even for Howdy Doody (R-FL), they usually call on Colbert's buddy Lynn Westmorland (R-GA) or runner-up for stupidest man on Capitol Hill, Patrick McNutcase (R-NC). Now, if those three pass... well, that's pretty much the bottom of the barrel. Of course you can always turn the barrel upside down and get something even below the bottom of the barrel. And today they did.

Meet Lamar Smith (R-TX), a hard right fanatic so extreme that his voting record could be used as a primer on how to destroy a country. He never met a corporation he didn't want to subsidize; he never met a millionaire he didn't want to give a tax refund to; he never met an environment he wanted to protect; he never met a human right or civil liberty he agreed with. His record shows a hatred of working men and women and contempt for the middle class, the elderly, women, minorities, and public education. Below the bottom of the barrel is a very apt description for ole Lamar.

Although Lamar actually lives in a fancy house on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, he represents the I-35 district between Austin and San Antonio. And even if his Cape Cod neighbors would laugh at this, back in Texas, where the sun shines down mighty strong and the radio can drive good men crazier than the hot sun, people still buy into Blame-Clinton-First... for everything.

The whole country is concerned about the Bush Regime's politicization of the Justice Department and the serious investigation about what happened there. But not ole Lamar. He wants to get another chance to talk about Bill Clinton's penis. When the Republicans were voted out of power in Congress last November, Lamar lost his ability to issue any subpoenas but it looks like no one told him. Poor thing.


Today he was annoying everyone on the House Judiciary Committee with the latest bit of Republican obstructionism. Committee Chairman John Conyers just rolled his eyes and shook his head. "This desire to travel back in time and change the subject cannot change the fact that the vice president's former chief of staff was convicted of perjury for thwarting the investigation into the outing of a CIA operative. Now many Republicans who thought perjury was impeachable, think it's pardonable for the rich and powerful."

Lamar, previously best known for botching a conspiratorial fax he meant to send to Karl Rove about politicizing immigration as an issue to use against Democrats, sent President Clinton a disrespectful letter, exactly the kind of stunt one would expect from a clown like Lamar Smith.

WILL HENRY KISSINGER'S CRIMINAL & PREDATORY FOREIGN AFFAIRS FINALLY CATCH UP WITH HIM?

I'm not an expert on Uruguay-- after my 2 day visit a few months ago-- but I did notice that it's a very moderate country in all ways. The weather is. So are the politics. And you don't see these huge discrepancies in wealth. I'm sure there must be some very rich people-- what country doesn't have those kinds of dangerous parasites-- but you don't notice the disparities between rich and poor in Uruguay the way you do in Argentina and Brazil, the two giant countries little Uruguay is sandwiched between. I recall that they used to call themselves "the Switzerland of South America," and there are no mountains.

It's a pretty homogeneous country-- like 95% European, mostly Spanish and Italian. (The early Portuguese and Spanish settlers killed all the native inhabitants.) In the mid-60s the U.S. started training the Uruguayan military and police in the fine arts of suppression and torture. See, and you thought it was all Bush, Cheney and Gonzales who got that going! By 1968 there was a state of emergency followed in 1972 with a suspension of civil liberties. In 1973 there was a U.S.-backed military coup. Under U.S. tutelage the Switzerland of South America soon had the highest per capita percentage of political prisoners in the world. In 1984 massive protests broke out against the U.S.-backed dictatorship and democracy resumed that year.

Why the little history lesson today about a small far away country with no oil that you'll probably never visit? It's another in a growing list of country's Henry Kissinger will never be able to sit his fat ass down in again. Kissinger is wanted for questioning in France, Argentina and Chile. You see... the right wing military dictatorships/U.S. proxies in Latin America were worried that popular resentment against the feudal system and grinding poverty would lead to democratic reforms, especially in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile and Bolivia. The U.S. helped them start a state terror system called Operation Condor which was used to assassinate and terrorize anyone who opposed the fascists.

One of my friends, Amelia Lafferriere, who has done some writing on my political blog, was imprisoned by the Argentine junta as part of this operation. (George Bush I, then CIA director, warned Congressman Ed Koch that he was an assassination target of Uruguayan fascists in the mid-70s. He was sponsoring legislation to cut off US military assistance to Uruguay because of egregious human rights abuses. By the early 1970's Henry Kissinger seemed to be directing the whole program, ordering hits on politicians, journalists, labor leaders, even the Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army, Rene Schneider. (Schneider's family is suing Kissinger now.)


Now, as for Uruguay, which currently has a dedicated democratic government, a request to extradite Kissinger was filed with the Supreme Court last month on behalf of Bernardo Arnone, a political activist who was kidnapped, tortured and murdered ("disappeared") by the right wing militarists in 1976. The government is studying the request and trying to come up with a solution since it is unlikely the Bush Regime is about to hand over any Americans to a foreign justice system, no matter how heinous the crimes he committed. Bad precedent for quite a few figures in the current Regime, don't you think?

BATTLE OVER THE WAR MOVES TO THE SENATE-- AND THE VOTERS ARE WATCHING

Last week all the big Iraq War action was in the House. It shifts to the Senate today. And it's all about McConnell and his Cheney Coalition trying to amend the bill to death. Their first tactic will be to try to strip out what Bush and Cheney fear most-- the part about setting a redeployment deadline. This plays out in a backdrop of the run-up to next year's elections. Today's NY Times discusses how the war is impacting the campaigns of heretofore reliable GOP rubber stamps like John Sununu (NH), Gordon Smith (OR), Susan Collins (ME), Norm Coleman (MN) and others.

Smith is anguished-- about the war as well as his seat-- and he's been making noises that indicate he will vote for redeployment. Hagel makes similar noises but they always wind up being the sound of a chick clucking; he never deviates from the Cheney line when it comes to voting. Sununu is thought to be the Republican most likely to lose his seat, his rubber stamp support for Bush being only one of several reasons, some being demographic.

On Monday, the Senate resumes its protracted struggle to forge an Iraq strategy. Mr. Sununu and a handful of Republicans-- including those facing re-election next year and those who have expressed unhappiness with President Bush’s conduct of the war but are uncomfortable with the idea of setting a date for withdrawal-- find themselves searching for balance as they juggle three tasks: responding to the frustrations of their constituents, resisting the demands of antiwar Democrats and not entirely abandoning the White House...

Like nearly all Republicans in Congress, Mr. Sununu said he opposed establishing a timetable. "Telling your enemies what day you're going to start withdrawing troops and what day you're going to finish withdrawing troops is irresponsible," he said.

Smith disagrees with him. Coleman is most concerned about his job-- he's probably tied with Sununu for most likely to be working on K Street after next year's election-- and he's just biting his nails and hoping someone figures out something to save his worthless neck. "Minnesotans have a deep concern about the war," Mr. Coleman said. "The question is, 'What's the path out?'"

Coleman, of course, isn't the only Republican hoping someone comes up with an answer that'll save his pitiful ass. There are 18 Republicans who have voted in absolute lockstep for every single hideous proposal Bush and Cheney have shoved out their way between October 10, 2002 and May 26, 2005. Most of the rest have managed to one or two votes where they could prove their "independence" by voting against Bush. Not one Republican-- certainly not Hagel or Specter or Collins or Snowe-- has an Iraq voting record that indicates anything other than abject rubber stampism.

There were 4 U.S. Senators who opposed Bush on every single Iraq-related vote-- all Democrats, of course: Barbara Boxer, Richard Durbin, Ted Kennedy and Frank Lautenberg-- and 9 others who were close enough to perfect to still be wearing halos (Byrd, Akaka, Feingold, Harkin, Levin, Reed, Wyden and Mikulski). On the GOP side of the aisle, no one has a decent record. The "best" of the records of the senators up for re-election-- Collins' and Hagel's (going along with Bush on 24 of 29 Iraq-related roll calls)-- are still abysmal and far worse than even the most bloodthirsty Democrat (Ben Nelson). Sununu's record is one of the absolute worst in the entire Senate, showing him to be a complete and utter rubber stamp who abrogated all responsibilities he owed his constituents in order to back Bush on everything; he voted against Bush on one innocuous roll call in 2005 and ducked out of 6 important votes so he wouldn't be on record. Other than that it was Bush-Cheney all the way.

There is also a problem for red state Democrats-- who tend to be reactionary themselves to begin with-- like Mary Landrieu (LA) and Mark Pryor (AR), both of whom also face votes next year. Landrieu, who has one of the worst Iraq voting records of any Democrat-- almost as bad as Ben Nelson's or Lieberman's-- can usually be counted on by the Cheney Coalition to come over to their side when they need her. Pryor, who has a mediocre Iraq voting record is a little more nuanced. He wants our troops out of Iraq but he doesn't think the date should be made public. "I would rather it be classified. It’s a little bit like World War II. The Germans knew we were coming, but they didn't know when and where. We didn't publish the D-Day details in the paper before we came." According to Raw Story McConnell is counting on Pryor and Ben Nelson to join the Cheney Coalition to defeat the Democratic proposals to get us out of Iraq. Progressives foolishly left Nelson alone when he ran last year. We shouldn't make the same mistake with Pryor.

Certainly no one is expecting a big senate seat battle next year in Alabama. They may be in for a surprise. James L. over at the Swing State Project introduces us to a challenger for far right fanatic incumbent Jeff Sessions (one of the 18 with 100% Bush rubber stamp records on Iraq): Ron Sparks, Alabama's highly popular Agriculture and Industry Commissioner. He's a fiery populist who could wind up igniting the kind of sparks that John Tester and Jim Webb lit in Montana and Virginia to take out extremist wingnuts like Sessions. James L. offers some inspiring quotes that will have the same appeal in Alabama as they would in California, Colorado  or Minnesota:

I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired of the $3 a gallon gasoline. I'm tired of seeing Exxon-Mobile bringing out these $10 billion profits. I'll tell you something: There's something wrong when you pay an executive, a CEO of a large company, $28,000 an hour. We haven't increased minimum wage in this country since 1997. We had a minimum wage in Washington, and they tied the estate tax to it. It's not about the working people when you tie those two types of legislation together.

Things are not getting better in this country. You know, we've got a president who marched us off to war with no plan. I'm a veteran. I served this country. But there is something wrong when you carry your soldiers into battle and won't give them the tools to fight with. Don't send these young men and women across the water to fight for our freedom in this country when you won't give them a gun to fight with and you won't give them a bullet-proof vest. Then when they come home, you don't want to give them what they deserve. That's wrong, ladies and gentlemen.

UPDATE: I WONDER WHAT THE POLLING DATA LOOKS LIKE IN ARKANSAS AND NEBRASKA

A newly released poll from Pew shows that about 60% of Americans want their congressional representatives to support a bill calling for U.S. withdrawal by mid-2008. About a third of Americans oppose such a bill, roughly equal to Bush's anemic support in the country. Democrats and independents favor a deadline even more strongly. Gee, I hope someone tells Mark Pryor before he makes a fatal mistake and becomes the Democratic face of this war-- and next year's Joe Lieberman.

Say, didja hear the news? A former U.S. attorney says the Bush White House tried to politicize the way he did his job--before taking it away. Ho-hum.

So now Washington State's John McKay has told his story of wildly inappropriate if not outright illegal political pressure being put on him in his job as a U.S. attorney--before the job was taken away from him in the Bush purge.

So what else is new?

For anyone with a grain of sense, the pattern has been obvious for some time: Flush with hubris from the 2004 election, the administration decided to take to the next level its already-aggressive program of politicizing previously nonpolitical--or at least minimally political--functions of government.

Now, as an avowed nuts-'n'-bolts kinda guy, I enjoy the details, but in the big picture, it merely confirms what we already knew. Sure, it weakens Idiot Al "The Torture Guy" Gonzales's already-shaky hold on his job as U.S. attorney general. But Idiot Al has never been the issue. The issue is the administration's wholesale corruption of the federal justice system.

Of course, over on the other side of the political spectrum, where truth is for suckers and all that matters is the whacked-out far-right ideologies of the assorted sociopaths gathered under the GOP's Big Money tent, the assembled liars and nincompoops, thugs and megalomaniacs burble on as if nothing had happened. It's much ado about nothing, they say, just those damn Dems once again trying to make political hay out of nothing. Okay, maybe mistakes were made, and come to think of it, maybe they were made by that incompetent Idiot Al "The Torture Guy."

What it is, of course, is systematic and obviously deliberate perversion of our entire system of government in pursuit of power and profit for the people who have bought, or at least rented, that government. Just to put it in context: Imagine if the right-wing noise machine had been able to manufacture even a wisp of suspicion of Democratic political interference with a federal prosecutor. We would be hearing about it 24/7 from all the noise-machine outlets, and probably from the "mainstream" media as well, with demands for the president's resignation or impeachment.

In what Howie has taken to calling Purge-Gate, we have "smoking guns" all over the damned place, all still loaded, so that you barely know where to step in the justice-killing fields of the Bush administration. And the wingut deniers just go on denying.

So what else is new?

BLUE AMERICA: GET A TAX REFUND AND HELP RE-ELECT JERRY McNERNEY

Yesterday I went to a solar-powered, energy efficient home not far from where I live to present Jerry McNerney with the check last weekend's Blue America townhall meeting had voted to give him. Jerry, one of 5 members of Congress selected, has been diligently keeping the promises he made when he ran for Congress in northern California. For some it was enough that he would rid the political scene of the odious and corrupt extremist Dirty Dick Pombo. But not for Congressman McNerney. Getting rid of Pombo was just a baby step in what's he's got in mind. This is a man who is serious about turning around U.S. foreign policy and making it a force for good. This is a man whose passion is making renewable energy the basis of a thriving economy is a sustainable environment. He's got a big job cut out for himself. And getting re-elected is a necessary part of it. Next weekend Jerry will be a return guest at Firedoglake to tell us how his first 3 months in D.C. have been going. I hope we can give his campaign kitty a boost too.

One of the people I met at the event yesterday was Zack Webber, a blog lurker and Democratic activist. He's also a tax accountant and he gave me a great idea. You may not know it, but the U.S. government owes you some loot-- a kind of peace dividend... from the Spanish-American War. Zack has written up a couple of paragraphs explaining it:

You might ask, "What is Zack talking about? Has he gone crazy from doing too many tax returns?" I may be a bit daft but it is true, and it shows up on your tax return.

Way back in 1898 when the U.S. went to war there was a federal excise tax placed on long distance telephone calls, which were a luxury as only the wealthy had phones back then. After that war ended, the phone tax was still being collected until last year, when a court ruled that the Federal Government could no longer collect the tax and would have to refund it to taxpayers.

The refund period is from March 2003 through July 2006. You can claim either the actual tax paid (if you have your old phone bills) or take a standard "safe harbor" amount from $30 to $60 depending on the number of people on the return. There is a line on the tax forms to claim the credit and another form for taking the actual tax paid, though almost all taxpayers are claiming the standard amount. There is also a Form 1040 EZ-T to get the credit for people who otherwise would not need to file a return.

At least the government tried to pay for the war in 1898 which is so unlike the current administration which prefers to cut taxes on the rich and add to the national debt rather than pay the costs of our wars.

So... may I make a proposal? Get your refund that you probably had no idea was coming to you-- and consider donating half of it to re-elect Jerry McNerney to Congress where he will continue fighting our battles for us. And don't forget-- next Saturday: Firedoglake, 1PM (PT)-- come meet Jerry and ask him whatever you'd like about being in Congress. You can donate to Jerry's campaign now, Saturday or any time afterwards. As we learned last year when we raised over $500,000 for progressive candidates like Jerry, even donations of $5 and $10 mount up. Together we are strong enough to beat back the right wing money machine. We took back Congress in November; let's keep it and expand our majority.

DARK DAYS FOR THE DARK SIDE: LAURA BUSH MUST BE LOCKING UP THE LIQUOR CABINETS IN THE WHITE HOUSE

Gee, I turned on CNN when I woke this morning, around 5AM, and it was all about how Gonzales' support among Republicans had eroded. While I was sleeping? They even had professional South Carolina ass-licker supreme, Lindsey Graham, one of the most contemptible rubber stamps the Bush Regime has ever been emboldened by, on for an interview. Even the rarely rational, closeted homophobic senator, a member of the Judiciary Committee, is now admitting that Gonzales "has said some things that just don't add up."

And Republican senators, none of whom have an ounce of credibility after 6 years of conspiring with and enabling the Bush Regime to rape and pillage everything Americans hold dear, are one thing. Hard right propagandist Robert Novak is something else again. He has an even more dire message for the Rove and Cheney dead-enders than do Specter, Hagel and Graham.

With nearly two years remaining in his presidency, George W. Bush is alone. In half a century, I have not seen a president so isolated from his own party in Congress -- not Jimmy Carter, not even Richard Nixon as he faced impeachment.

Republicans in Congress do not trust their president to protect them. That alone is sufficient reason to withhold statements of support for Gonzales, because such a gesture could be quickly followed by his resignation under pressure. Rep. Adam Putnam (Fla.)... praised Donald Rumsfeld in November only to see him sacked shortly thereafter.

But not many Republican lawmakers would speak up for Gonzales even if they were sure Bush would stick with him. He is the least popular Cabinet member on Capitol Hill, even more disliked than Rumsfeld was. The word most often used by Republicans to describe the management of the Justice Department under Gonzales is "incompetent."


...The I-word (incompetence) is also used by Republicans in describing the Bush administration generally. Several of them I talked to cited a trifecta of incompetence: the Walter Reed hospital scandal, the FBI's misuse of the USA Patriot Act and the U.S. attorneys firing fiasco. "We always have claimed that we were the party of better management," one House leader told me. "How can we claim that anymore?"

The way they claim anything? By brazenly lying and getting their media shills to echo it.

IT'S HOWDY DOODY TIME! (PLUS BONUS-- THE TIES THAT BIND: RAHM EMANUEL & ADAM PUTNAM)

Saturday evening I decided to take a look at the early on-line version of the Sunday Times to see if there were any stories about any of my special targets. You know how excited I get when I find stuff about the worst reactionaries, the Lynn Westmorelands or Patrick McNutcases or Rahm Emanuel. Well immediately, on page 1, I found one of my favorite Republican characters: Adam Putnam (AKA- "that Howdy Doody-looking Nimrod"). I got so excited that I wound up causing Safari to crash. And when I came back... Howdy Doody was gone. And he was gone all day. I was distraught. A friend of mine finally e-mailed a Times editor who informed him that it would run today. Sunday was a slow news day, but not that slow; someone had peremptorily yanked young Putnam's puff piece out of the Sunday paper.

You see, despite the accolades bestowed on him by his Democratic counterpart, the aforementioned sleazebag from Chicago, Emanuel, no one much cares about Representative Doody. Although Speaker Pelosi's office has pointed out that Doody is an ineffective representative-- "... a key question to ask is whether his priorities are delivering for his district, helping our troops in Iraq and our veterans, or trying to get his name in the newspaper by resorting to cheap partisan tactics and over-the-top rhetoric. Unfortunately, the latter seems to be the case."-- Emanuel sees it differently.

I consider Adam one of the best Republicans. I think he’s a worthy opponent. He does his homework. He doesn't just get up there and wing it. He knows his stuff. He's a sharp communicator.

He does his homework? After his milk and cookies? Before getting tucked in and going beddy-bye-- even before George W.?

As usual, when Emanuel disagrees with Speaker Pelosi, I usually agree with her. And I'm not the only one. Keith Olbermann recently named Congressman Doody "The Worst Person in the World." Keith:

But our gold-medalist Congressman Adam Putnam of Florida-- chairman of the House Republican Conference Committee, one of the guys who ran with, and pushed, the phony Nancy Pelosi plane request story.

He's now admitted to the Tampa Tribune newspaper that he not only doesn't know if the story was true... he doesn't care.

He read it in the Moonie Paper in Washington.

Don't know if it's true...don't care if it's true.

Watch this man. He could be nominated for President some day.

Congressman Adam Putnam of Florida... today's Worst Person In The World!

You wanna watch the video? If you know Emanuel, send it to him too. Even better was the diary EmperorHadrian put up yesterday on DailyKos.

What is amazing about Putnam is that despite his age, he still shows the exact same level of moral and intellectual atrophy as the Republican party has shown since 1994... Putnam... is not really that unique amongst Republicans. Truth and reality didn't matter to him any more or any less than it does (or more specifically, doesn't) matter to any other Republican. As long as they could keep repeating a bogus, invented charge, the more time Democrats would have to waste in responding to their manufactured charge. To this extent, Putnam shows the same contempt of reality that all other Republicans show. Fantasy gives them more material with which to attack Democrats. This also shows that Putnam shows the exact same level of partisanship and ideology as all other Republicans. Just like all other Republicans, he would rather win an election than actually do something positive for the country. Like with all other Republicans, winning is the end, not the means to an end

It is the fact that Putnam doesn't really stick out from any other Republican in his contempt of reality, partisanship, or amoral and authoritarian personality, that it lends us to a realization. He is the second youngest member of the house. If one of the youngest Republicans is this arrogant, ideological and amoral, then we can expect to be dealing with this Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) for some time into the future. The battle just started in 1994, and it by no means ended in 2006. 2006 was simply the closing of the first chapter, and the beginning of the second...

It is a very dangerous personality type, because it is so amoral. In that sense, it is quite comparable to the personality type of a sociopath. DeLay, Rove and Putnam all behave in ways remarkably similar to sociopaths. The RWA type will destroy Iraq, destroy the UN, destroy world peace, destroy the federal budget, destroy the futures of our citizens, and destroy the planet, if that means electoral victories. This is the value system of people like Putnam. They will win at any cost. They will accuse democrats of doing the exact same things that they themselves are doing. For the long term survival of the country, we will have to keep fighting them, and ensure that we are able to keep beating them. If we can't beat them, then God help us all.

Maybe Pelosi ought to fire Emanuel as Democratic Caucus Chair and hire EmperorHadrian.

So now you know what Speaker Pelosi thinks, what Rahm Emanuel thinks, what Keith Olbermann thinks and, best of all, what EmperorHadrian thinks. Time for the NY Times. Putnam is "a tousled redhead whose cherubic appearance still causes Capitol police to stop him occasionally." He "has taken on the role of attack dog over the last three months... and generally tried to eke out political points at every opportunity." (Ahh... that's why Emanuel admires him. Honor among thieves...) But, yes... it was a very slow news day. The Times may be laughable but T Boggs has the real story of Howdy Doody and why we should care.

THE CHENEY RULE-- AND CHUCK HAGEL'S SCHIZOPHRENIA

I wind up talking with a lot of congressional staffers, mostly people who want to help me get information about their bosses or else people who are helping me set up Blue America live blog sessions. Almost every one of the ones I spoke to this week asked me if I thought the anti-war activists would be angry that their boss voted for the Supplemental Emergency Spending bill. There's a good deal of worry that, despite MoveOn, many progressive activists are pissed off that-- regardless of possibly good intentions-- the effect is another year of killing and catastrophe and another $100 billion down the Bush-created rat hole.

I've detected some anger, but most activists I've spoken to seem to understand the realities progressive members of Congress are up against. The numbers don't add up in either house of Congress. There are too many Republicans and too many reactionary Democrats to be able to pass the kind of legislation ending the war that most Democrats favor.


The other day I spoke with Carol Shea-Porter about it. She had to do some soul-searching to figure out what was the right thing to do. Her opposition to Bush's war was a good part of the impetus that got her to run for office. She certainly isn't a professional politician. In the end she felt the compromise Speaker Pelosi, whose own anti-war credentials are strong and trustworthy, was the best that could be achieved. And, as I mentioned here yesterday, Congresswoman Shea-Porter told me about the Cheney Rule another Democrat had told her about. Basically it just asks you to determine what Cheney would want you to do. And on this bill, Cheney wanted a "no" vote-- which helps explain why all but two-- Wayne Gilchrest and Walter Jones-- marched in their usual lockstep to give a big resounding "no" to the hopes of the majority of Americans who have lost confidence in the Bush Regime to pursue this disastrous war. And that includes fake anti-war Republican Ron Paul.

Now, speaking of fake anti-war Republicans, Chuck Hagel, who takes every opportunity to vote with the Republican rubber stampers promoting Bush's Iraq agenda was running his mouth about how terrible Bush is again. This guy must be a real political schizophrenic. He tried to sound like a Democrat on TV and then votes with the worst of the worst-- like Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn-- back in the Senate.

"I am opposed to the president's further escalation of American military involvement. We are undermining our interests in the Middle East, we are undermining our military, we're undermining the confidence of people around the world in what we're doing," Hagel said on ABC's This Week program.

"We have clearly a situation where the president has lost the confidence of the American people in his war effort," he said. "It is now time, going into the fifth year of that effort, for the Congress to step forward and be part of setting some boundaries and some conditions as to our involvement."

He's even raised the possibility of impeachment if Bush keeps going down this course. And now watch him vote for whatever Cheney wants... again. Look at that voting record! He makes reactionaries like Jim Marshall and Joe Lieberman look almost patriotic! On October 10-11, 2002 Hagel had his rubber stamp out for the 6 roll calls that made up S.J. Re 45, the authorization of the use of force against Iraq. He was with Bush on all 6. There have been 29 Iraq-related roll calls in the Senate between Oct 10, 2002 and May 26, 2005. Hagel rubber stamped the first 22 of them before pulling his head out of his ass long enough to vote with the Democrats on 2 harmless bills in 2004 and another innocuous bill in 2005 seeking the Bush draft a real budget instead of the fake ones he's been sending to Congress. That's been the extent of Hagel's anti-war activites vote-wise.


UPDATE: HOWARD ZINN SEES IT DIFFERENTLY

Like I mentioned last week, the Democratic Caucus gave Maxine Waters, Lynn Woolsey and Barbara Lee, the 3 congresswomen who founded the Out of Iraq Caucus and who voted against the Supplemental, a standing ovation. Confusing? It doesn't have to be. Howard Zinn disagrees with the decision the Democratic leadership made to attempt to end the war within the bounds of reality (i.e.- not having the votes to win an outright cut off of funds to the Bush Regime). Zinn's arguments are still powerful and crucial to understand.

IS THERE A MORMON MAFIA BEHIND KYLE SAMPSON? OR JUST A NETWORK OF FAR RIGHT EXTREMISTS?

Karen, the head of DWT's Mean Jean Schmidt Department, had a slow news week with Mean Jean keeping a low profile after the vomit incident. So Karen started tracing some of the friendship webs that have been behind Kyle Sampson's otherwise inexplicable rise to power. Karen discovered a network of wingnuts, many of whom are Brigham Young University alumni and believers in the large and wealthy Mormon cult, who recommend and protect each other. Their cabal has been fueled by a huge influx of patronage from the Bush Regime. (It helps explain why Utah is the last remaining state in the entire U.S. where Bush is viewed as doing a good job as president.) Karen pointed out to me that there is no comparable network among, say Methodists who graduated from SMU, or among any other sect or religious group, although I hope some time she will take a look at the highly secretive Opus Dei sect for us.

STRANGE CONNECTIONS

by Karen Allen

In the ongoing matter of the seven US Attorneys being fired for political reasons, it’s interesting to look at the threads and knots beneath the tapestry.  As an example, let's take a look at Kyle Sampson, who recently resigned his title as Chief of Staff for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.  Sampson didn't quit, he just gave up his title. Today, he is still drawing his full salary at the Department of Justice.


Two of Sampson’s, and relatedly Gonzales', most staunch supporters in the media have been Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT) and Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT). The relationships of these men and others who are outspoken for Sampson run deep and mysteriously.

Sheldon Bradshaw, a former Bush deputy US Attorney General and now Counsel in the Food and Drug Administration, says Sampson has "an outstanding legal mind." Bradshaw is said to have slowed down the prosecution of tobacco companies by the FDA. Bradshaw also is first counselor to Kyle Sampson, in the same ward (district) where Sampson is the bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Salt Lake City. Sheldon graduated from Brigham Young University.

Corrine Larsen Bradshaw worked for Senator Orrin Hatch. Mrs. Bradshaw is the wife of the above Sheldon Bradshaw. She also was legislative director for Utah Senator Robert Bennett.

Elizabeth Cheney, daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, is a good friend of Sampson’s and was a classmate of his in law school. It was Elizabeth who is said to have put a word in with her father to get Sampson a top job in the Bush administration. Hatch was also instrumental.

Sampson practiced law in Salt Lake City until 1999, when he then began working in the office of Senator Orrin Hatch.

Brad Berenson was an associate counsel to Bush in the first term. He states Sampson has "a shrewd political talent."  Berenson is now Sampson’s lawyer in the US Attorney matter now under Congressional scrutiny.

An email released in the document dump this past Thursday suggests Sampson as early as 2005 may have tried to push US Attorney for Utah Paul Warner out of his job so Sampson could then be appointed US Attorney. Warner did leave his position in 2006 to become a federal magistrate.

The job in Utah as US Attorney was given to Brett Tolman, a former Senate Judiciary Committee staff member to  Senator Arlen Specter, who Specter now blames for inserting the stealthy, last-minute paragraph into the Patriot Act renewal in March, 2006, permitting Bush to appoint US Attorneys without congressional approval. In essence, Tolman wrote and surreptitiously inserted the paragraph in the Patriot Act renewal that enabled him to get the job as US Attorney.

Another Utah resident, Taylor Oldroyd, now with the US Dept. of Agriculture, wrote a piece in an issue of the Brigham Young University alumni magazine, saying that he and other Sampson friends now have jobs in the Bush administration.

Brigham Young University recently removed Kyle Sampson’s photo from its online alumni magazine so that members of the media would not have access to it.

Bush nominated Charles R. Christopherson, Jr. to be chief financial officer of the Department of Agriculture. Christopherson graduated from Brigham Young Univ.

Timothy Flanagan, a friend of Sampson’s, was named as US Deputy Attorney General, despite opponents pointing out that Flanagan had no prosecutorial experience whatsoever. Flanagan previously worked at the disgraced Tyco Corporation. Flanagan is another Brigham Young alumnus.

Michael O’Neil is Chief Counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee (see Brett Tolman, above).  O’Neill also graduated from Brigham Young Univ.

Thomas Griffith was appointed to the DC Circuit Court, which hears appeals from the US District Court and reviews the decisions of a number of administrative agencies. Griffith also graduated from Brigham Young Univ.

Robert Clive Jones was nominated by Bush to the federal District Court judgeship. Jones also graduated from Brigham Young Univ.

Jay Bybee became the judge for the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, nominated by Bush. Bybee listed one of his passions as serving the J. Reuben Clark Law Society, an international professional organization for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Bybee also graduated from Brigham Young Univ.

Ted Stewart, former chief of staff to the governor of Utah, was confirmed as a federal district court judge.

Utah District Court Judge Denise Posse-Blanco Lindberg testified on behalf of Supreme Court Justice John Roberts at his confirmation hearings. She was appointed to her state court position by Utah Governor Michael O. Leavitt, whom Bush chose as Secretary of Health and Human Services. She graduated from Brigham Young Univ.


Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT) has said no one has been able to show that any corruption was involved in the US Attorney firings. Yet each day it becomes more obvious as a fact that politics was the only involvement in those firings, directly by the Department of Justice and the White House. Cannon further states there is "nothing wrong with firing attorneys for the reason of politics."

Dick Cheney will be this year’s commencement speaker at Brigham Young University.

Is this making your head spin yet? There is much, much more!

TOM DeLAY-- STILL A HERO TO MANY ON THE FRINGES OF THE EXTREME RIGHT

OK, I'll try to make this my last mention of Tom DeLay until his trial; no promises though. Yesterday's Houston Chronicle got to the bottom of why 4 board members of the American Conservative Union resigned when the ACU brought on the Little Bug Man. I mean, we all know why-- no one wants to be associated with an outrageous and exposed crook like DeLay-- but what's interested is how they couched their disdain for their former champion.

DeLay's roles in ramping up government spending and establishing a system of raising money through close dealings with lobbyists were cited by resigning members as their motive for moving on.

"He was part of a congressional leadership that oversaw a massive expansion of the government, which conservatives opposed," said Robert Luddy, a North Carolina businessman among the board members who resigned. "It is one thing to call yourself a conservative, but you have to act on it."

The sentiment was echoed by political strategist Marc Rotterman, another board defector.

"Conservatives looked to Tom DeLay to cut government not grow it. He was complicit in the largest expansion of government in recent times."

In defending his controversial decision to bring DeLay on, ACU 25 year Chairman David Keene, a notorious K Street lobbyist, said he felt DeLay's "contacts" (he means sources of money for vicious disinformation campaigns) would be valuable. "When I introduced him (to ACU members) I said that, like a number of Republicans, Tom had done some work on the dark side," Keene recalled. "Now, he wants to harness his abilities for our agenda... Who can you think of better than Tom DeLay to be sitting in the room when you are setting priorities with Congress?"

An anaconda? A cobra? Python?

CAN A THRIVING, VITAL INDUSTRY COMMIT SUICIDE? MEET THE MUSIC BUSINESS

Last week I went to see an underground concert by a band with a nice cult following, Dangerous Muse. They've never been on the radio and they don't even have a CD out-- just some downloads that are available through their MySpace page and at iTunes. They played in a funky, out of the way and irregular venue. The band dedicated their newest song, "Goodbye, Goodnight" to a friend of theirs who had just gone over to Iraq and they had some remarks about the Doofus-in-Chief but that isn't why I'm writing about the concert. In fact, this isn't going to be too political. I'm writing because I ran into lots of old friends from the music biz who I rarely see any longer, people I used to work with.

They were a pretty morose bunch. No one seemed upbeat or optimistic. One told me that the number of people working at the company was down by half. Another complained about salaries and benefits sucking. And another guy told me all he thinks about is what his severance package will look like. I knew it was dismal but... wow. All three of these guys work at the crown jewel of the entire record industry, the best and (once) most artist friendly and employee friendly label in history.

Thursday the Wall Street Journal published an article about the music industry that is about two steps a step and a half from an obituary: Sales Of Music Long In Decline, Plunge Sharply.

In a dramatic acceleration of the seven-year sales decline that has battered the music industry, compact-disc sales for the first three months of this year plunged 20% from a year earlier, the latest sign of the seismic shift in the way consumers acquire music.
The sharp slide in sales of CDs, which still account for more than 85% of music sold, has far eclipsed the growth in sales of digital downloads, which were supposed to have been the industry's salvation.

It didn't have to be that way. The willful disregard for technological developments and the violently negative attitude towards the desires of their customers-- music consumers-- did the music business in. Instead of embracing change, they fought it; you can't fight change. One of the problems is that they failed to understand who their customers were. The sales departments across the labels-- rarely the best, less frequently the brightest-- somehow managed to convince responsible management that the customers were the obviously doomed record stores (whose needs were sharply diverging from those of the end-users, the consumers). I was very lucky. I remembered how the head of sales at my company had dug his feet in and fought previous technological developments-- like the cassette and CD, complaining how the "customers" would never go for it because they would have to change the hardware in the stores.

The slide stems from the confluence of long-simmering factors that are now feeding off each other, including the demise of specialty music retailers like longtime music mecca Tower Records. About 800 music stores, including Tower's 89 locations, closed in 2006 alone.

And if it's marginally more profitable to use the space at Target or WalMart to sell toilet paper, the record companies will have no place to sell their CDs at all. Except to the 100 million iPod users, who record executives are starting to see as part of the future. Shame they're a decade late... and all that bad blood!

Once-- far too late-- industry execs realized they couldn't stop digital distribution (a few months ago in many cases), they started creating a fantasy that the rise of digital music would compensate for the catastrophic drop in CD sales. While execs had once bragged that they had never used a computer because it was just a fancy typewriter and isn't that what secretaries are for, a whole generation of music consumers grew up and grew used to getting free downloads. Estimates are that there are a billion free downloads... a month. (Lesson: embrace technology... fast.) Anyway, the recent fantasy hasn't worked out.

Digital sales of individual songs this year have risen 54% from a year earlier to 173.4 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan. But that's nowhere near enough to offset the 20% decline from a year ago in CD sales to 81.5 million units. Overall, sales of all music-- digital and physical-- are down 10% this year. And even including sales of ringtones, subscription services and other "ancillary" goods, sales are still down 9%, according to one estimate.

WalMart, embraced by lazy salesmen-- one stop selling-- now have the power to set prices and have driven the labels' profit margins into the toilet. The Warner Music Group, where I once worked, reported a 74% drop in profits for the make-it-or-break-it 4th quarter. Things haven't gotten better. In fact many think the death spiral has accelerated. If unit sales are down 10%, value sales-- far more important-- are down as much as 25%.

Savvy artist managers now see CDs as part of a marketing tool that helps to sell concert tickets, merchandise and, most important, a brand name that can be used in music licensing. Once in the cat bird's seat, the record companies are fast becoming superfluous. Or maybe I should rephrase that. Smart people are fast realizing that the record companies are superfluous.


AFTERTHOUGHT: This is probably the very first problem I've discussed in the history of DWT that I didn't blame directly on George Bush's incompetence or malfeasance. The economic hallmark of the Bush era is certainly unalloyed corporate greed and uncontrolled, irrational avarice. The music business' biggest problems are certainly part and parcel of that, but predate Bush. Today the country is being pushed into the post-Enron era marked by a last-ditch, major anti-regulatory offensive from a BushCo that is no longer trusted by the vast majority of Americans.

BUSH REGIME FIRED CAROL LAM TO PROTECT JERRY LEWIS BUT THERE WAS ANOTHER U.S. ATTORNEY WHO WAS MUCH EASIER TO GET RID OF-- MEET DEBRA WONG YANG

The San Bernardino Sun means a lot more to Jerry Lewis than the NY Times or the Washington Post, newspapers which have carried numerous stories about his outrageous, out-of-control corruption and a systemic criminality that even GOP presidential candidate John McCain felt compelled to allude to it while visiting the Inland Empire recently. Lately, though, the Republican-leaning Sun has been unable to keep Lewis' career in crime off its front pages. Lewis has now spent approximately one million dollars on lawyers-- and he hasn't been indicted yet. Of course, the $1,000,000 was to keep him from being indicted. And there are several theories about how that's been achieved.

In January I introduced readers to a former federal prosecutor from Los Angeles who was investigating Lewis. Her name is Debra Wong Yang. I don't know what federal prosecutors make but I'm guessing it was dramatically less than the $1.5 million signing bonus she got for leaving the feds-- in the middle of her investigation of Jerry Lewis-- and joining a top Republican law firm, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, the very firm, coincidentally which Lewis has paid a million dollars to defend him.

This past week the Sun ran a page one story on the Department of Justice scandal involving the politicized firing of lots of U.S. attorneys including, of course, Carol Lam. They connected the dots. Referring to an e-mail that Gonzales' now-fired chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, wrote the same day news of the Jerry Lewis investigation broke (May 11), which mentions, ominously "the real problem that we have right now with Carol Lam," Dianne Feinstein said on the Senate floor that "the timing looks really suspicious and it raises serious questions that need to be answered."

The investigation into Lewis was brought forward by Debra Wong Yang, the former U.S. Attorney overseeing the Los Angeles office.

Tying the two investigations is Brent Wilkes, a defense contractor indicted by Lam's office shortly before she was fired. Wilkes and top CIA official Kyle "Dusty" Foggo were the ones mentioned in Lam's e-mail sent May 10, 2006.

Wilkes was a client of Copeland Lowery Jaquez Denton & White, the Washington D.C. lobbying firm tied to the Lewis investigation. The now defunct firm's founder, Bill Lowery, is a former San Diego congressman-- who was replaced by Cunningham-- and longtime friend of Lewis'.

Wilkes was also a contributor to Lewis' campaign, and he worked for a former defense contractor who has claimed to have been been interviewed by federal investigators. The former contractor, Tom Casey, said he told investigators that Lewis asked him to hire Lowery's firm and give stock options to Lowery under a false name when the contractor was seeking a federal contract to digitize documents in 1993.

Yang resigned last November from her office to take a job with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher - the same firm Lewis has paid at least $900,000 to defend him.

She reportedly was paid a $1.5 million bonus for joining the firm, one of the most powerful in Los Angeles.

And while Yang was not one of the eight fired prosecutors, some speculation has arisen that she, too, was a casualty of the Justice Department's purge.

People in the know claim Yang was not purged-- just bought off. To this day, Lewis, a linchpin in the entire Republican Culture of Corruption that pervaded Washington, D.C, in recent years, has not be charged with any crimes. By firing Lam, the Bush Regime has signaled the law enforcement community that that's exactly the way they want it.

WAR STORIES

The idea of spending another $100 billion on Bush's Iraq War is pretty unacceptable. If Nancy Pelosi had the power to end the war she would do it. She doesn't. There are too many Republicans and reactionary Democrats that have been elected in the House and in the Senate. It's that simple. So what she did instead was put together a compromise that requires Bush to accept funding his other neglected catastrophes-- from Katrina rebuilding to veterans' healthcare-- plus requires him to live up to Department of Defense metrics for military preparedness and... most galling of all from his persepctive, to start wrapping up this catastrophic war next year.

The battle now shifts to the Senate and then will be fought out in the court of public opinion.

Many progressives were anguished and confused about the Supplemental Spending Bill. No one favored giving Bush another year to wreak havoc with another $100 billion dollars. But no one came up with a more pragmatic alternative to end the war. So, in the end, progressives got on board, almost to the last man. The only Democrats to have voted against Bush on every single one of the 44 Iraq-releated roll calls between October 10, 2002 and May 25, 2005 were Raul Grijalva (AZ), Maurice Hinchey (NY), James McGovern (MA) and Donald Payne (NJ). They all voted with Speaker Pelosi. As I mentioned the other day, at the end  the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Out of Iraq Caucus reluctantly got on board as well.

Barbara Lee (CA), Lynn Woolsey (CA), John Lewis (GA) and Maxine Waters (CA) cast symbolic "no" votes on behalf of all the anti-war Democrats who were feeling teh anguish big-time over this approach. And how did Speaker Pelosi feel about this "rebellion?" She praised them and led the House Democratic Caucus in giving them a standing ovation for their courageous and principled stand following an agreement Thursday night to stop whipping opposition to the measure, clearing the way for about 10 other liberals to support the bill, assuring passage. CongressDaily reported on some of the behind the scenes action.

Thursday's deal came as Republicans circulated a list of 29 Democrats who were expected to oppose the bill. In the end, only 14 Democrats defected as the measure passed, 218-212. Pelosi picked up momentum Thursday, when Reps. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., Albert Wynn, D-Md., Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., and James McGovern, D-Mass., who had been undecided, announced they would support the measure. Their votes were freed up as part of the 11th-hour deal worked out by the leaders and the anti-war caucus. Although some in the anti-war caucus stressed there was no quid pro quo to get Waters, Lee and Woolsey to stand down, other Democratic aides said the final agreement resulted from intense arm twisting and promises by the leaders as the hours wound down before the vote. One key might have come last week, after leaders pulled strong language about Iran from the bill to appease conservative Blue Dog Democrats. As liberal members threatened a revolt of their own, Pelosi promised in one Caucus meeting that they would get a chance to vote on a stand-alone measure to require President Bush to get congressional approval before taking military action against Iran.

Earlier in the week, with the outcome still uncertain, Pelosi and other leaders enlisted Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean and AFL-CIO Chairman John Sweeney to call lawmakers. Such efforts created some animosity, but judging from the clapping and cheering heard behind the Caucus' closed doors this morning, it was short-lived. But not everyone was happy. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, noted that four years ago lawmakers were told there was no alternative to invading Iraq, and now they are being told the only alternative is to continue the war. "That kind of thinking traps you, the idea that this has to go on," he said. "We are trapped in false logic." For her part, content with a crucial win that until recently had seemed out of reach, Pelosi said the 14 Democrats who voted against the bill would not face repercussions. "I don't even know who they are," she said.

Yesterday David Sirota celebrated by pointing out that the Progressive Caucus in Congress' new power. "The Progressive Democratic Members of Congress who had been considering trying to kill the supplemental bill that includes binding language to end the war made a deal with Speaker Pelosi to provide the necessary votes to pass the legislation. This is a principled and shrewd move that these lawmakers should be applauded for if and when the bill passes. And it is a courageous move because it is never, ever easy to swallow a compromise, even if it is clearly the right thing to do to achieve long-term goals. These Members of Congress played hardball from the beginning, and that hardball made sure this bill included strong, binding legislation to end the war. Without that hardball, that legislation wouldn't be in this supplemental at all. In fact, such binding language probably wouldn't even be voted on at all in any form, much less have a solid chance to be passed by the full House today. And because of their efforts, progressive Democrats have not only brought the war closer to an end, but they have become one of the most powerful blocs in the U.S. Congress."

BLUE AMERICA FINALLY WELCOMES CAROL SHEA-PORTER

Most people in government are lawyers. Of the 42 men who have served as president 25 were lawyers. The 109th Congress included 218 members who said they were attorneys. There was something very refreshing and unique about speaking with Carol Shea-Porter the other day. More than almost anyone I've interviewed for Blue America, she felt like "just plain folks." Before she became the first woman ever elected to Congress from New Hampshire-- just 4 months ago-- she... wasn't a lawyer; she was a social worker and a grassroots citizen-activist. "I'm looking at the problems Congress is facing through that prism... how does this impact ordinary people. What is the difference between policy intent and delivery and does this get us there?" Carol is joining is today at firedoglake (2PM, est) to talk about her prism and her campaign for re-election and to answer questions from fellow progressives.

I'd been trying to get Congresswoman Shea-Porter on the phone since last summer. She was too busy fighting an uphill battle, first against the state Democratic Establishment to win the nomination-- she beat the Democratic State House leader who was very much supported by our old pal Emanuel-- and then against an entrenched rubber stamp Republican doofus, Jeb Bradley. Since then, she's been busy trying to save the country. "I miss the serenity of the campaign," she told me, only half in jest. Before I could even ask her a question, once I did get her on the phone, she was off and running about one of the biggest passions that caused her to challenge both parties' establishments and run for Congress: Bush's catastrophic war in and disastrous occupation of Iraq.

Like every progressive member I spoke with in the last two weeks, Ms. Shea-Porter had gone through a great deal of anguish about supporting the Emergency Supplemental Spending Bill which authorizes spending over $100 billion dollars on Bush's war, while attempting to put him on some kind of a leash (setting real benchmarks, establishing tough readiness standards for deploying U.S. troops abroad and requiring the withdrawal of American combat forces by the end of August 2008). The congresswoman was once escorted out of a public event for wearing an anti-Bush/anti-war t-shirt. She's not one of those phony Inside-the-Beltway pols making believe they oppose the war while supporting it. This was a tough decision-- and a heartfelt one. The pragmatist in her won out. "Would I want a tougher leash? Yes, but I'm happy we're sending a powerful message out to the world. One of my colleagues who I spoke to about this told me about the Cheney Rule-- how would Dick Cheney want me to vote?"

Yesterday she urged her colleagues to support the bill. Watch her kick some GOP ass in the 60 seconds she was allotted during the debate:



Above and beyond the refreshing approach she brings to the congressional table, there is a verve and a humanity, even poetry, that is embodied by her service so far. She says she is doing her best to reflect the will and the needs of New Hampshire's first congressional district. "It has been an honor for me to vote to raise the minimum wage, to vote to take away unjust oil subsidies, to vote to allow for negotiations on the price of prescription drugs for our elderly, to vote to cut the interest rate in half for student loans, to vote to protect America's veterans and to improve healthcare for them and for our children. It's time to spend money in this country, on our people, instead of on a war in Iraq."

When I asked the congresswoman what had surprised her most about the realities she has bumped up against in her new job, she said it was that she's had "no problem keeping an independent voice." Ah, ha, thought I. What about your decision to run your re-election as another grassroots campaign without any help from the DCCC. That's unheard of. Emanuel must have had a fit. He didn't. This is what the bane of grassroots Democrats told Carol Shea-Porter at their meeting about her decision.

"You know your district better than anyone else. You won."

That she did. In the primary, she kicked his candidate's ass with only $17,000 and then, outspent 5-1 by the incumbent, she wound up as one of the only challengers in the country to unseat a Republican with less than a $1,000,000. Her campaign, in fact, spent under $300,000!

Now Bradley is trying to take back the seat and he and the Republicans-- one of the dirtiest GOPs anywhere in the U.S.-- along with their media allies have launched a full scale war against Congresswoman Shea-Porter. This article in the Hampton Union attests to the unrelenting Republican attack on her, above and beyond what they've done with almost any other freshman congressperson anywhere.

A couple weeks ago she won Russ Feingold's Pick A Progressive Patriot, which included a $5,000 purse. She's going to need a lot more than that if she's going to hold onto her very evenly split district. Last week we had an impromptu Blue America townhall meeting at Firedoglake and we selected 5 members of Congress who we felt were keeping the promises on which they had run. We sent gratitude checks of $200 each from the Blue America PAC to Jerry McNerney, John Yarmuth, John Hall, Paul Hodes and to Carol Shea-Porter. They were symbolic. Today I'd like to ask everyone to join me in helping make sure we keep someone who is proving to be a national treasure in Congress. It's going to take more than symbolism. Because we are many, even small donations of $5 or $10 will help send the congresswoman back into battle armed to meet the Big Money challenge that Bradley poses. Here's where to do it or you can send a check to Blue America, P.O. Box 27201, Los Angeles, CA 90027.

Many of us have read Joe Conason's powerful new book, It CAN Happen Here. Joe has been generous enough to send Blue America a box of them, autographed, and the first contributors today will each get one of the signed books (until the box is empty).

THE PURGE-GATE UPDATE

A lot happened yesterday regarding purge-gate-- the politicization of the Justice Department by Rove and Gonzales. Just as I was about to try to summarize the day's events, MSNBC came out with a report that somehow Gonzales got it all wrong when he said he was hands off and knew nothing about any of this stuff and all the firing was done by the terrible (now-fired) Sampson fellow. A new batch of e-mails proves two things: Gonzales was in on the whole deal from at least November 27 and... that same Gonzales is a lying sack of you-know-what.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales approved plans to fire several U.S. attorneys in a November meeting, according to documents released Friday that contradict earlier claims that he was not closely involved in the dismissals.

The Nov. 27 meeting, in which the attorney general and at least five top Justice Department officials participated, focused on a five-step plan for carrying out the firings of the prosecutors, Justice Department officials said late Friday.

There, Gonzales signed off on the plan, which was crafted by his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson.

And now the story is breaking everywhere. Today's NY Times is carrying basicallythe same story. "The previously undisclosed meeting appeared to contradict Mr. Gonzales’s previous statements about his knowledge of the dismissals. He said at a news conference on March 13 that he had not participated in any discussions about the removals, but knew in general that his aides were working on personnel changes involving United States attorneys." Schumer flipped out when he was told about this stuff. "If the facts bear out that the attorney general knew much more than he admitted, he simply cannot continue as the attorney general." I wonder if he'll claim he was sleeping and missed all the parts about firing the prosecutors. Or, I guess, he could blame Bush.

I guess this all makes Arlen Specter's ludicrous offer-- obviously unacceptable to both sides-- to allow Rove to be questioned publicaly but just by a few senators and without having to take an oath, moot. Rove lies; always. That's all he ever does. The whole idea is to make him testify under oath so he can spend the forseeable future rotting in prison for perjury. James Moore wrote in the L.A. Times today that "if Rove winds up under oath before Congress, members will get a command performance by a man with masterful communications skills. They can expect to hear artful impressions, bits of information and a few stipulated facts. But they should not expect the truth." Rove watchers know  "how skilled he is at dancing around the periphery of issues. Any answers he does deliver can survive a thousand interpretations."

In any case CNN reported on Lou Dobbs show that the Regime "flatly rejected Senator Arlen Specter's compromise for some sort of closed testimony... So the White House position has not changed when it comes to this deal. What has changed, however, is... we saw a tone that was dramatically different than yesterday, toned down, if you  will. And it is really a part of this White House's effort to cajole those members of Congress, A, to accept their deal, and B, to lay off the attorney general, Alberto Gonzales."

The National Journal thinks something good can come out of all this. Really. They think both parties should "pledge that they will never again support a nominee of either party who is as ill-qualified." Maybe they could have mentioned this before so that The Decider would have known that running the Department of Justice "is a big, big job that can be done well only be people with superior abilities and judgement, deep understanding of the law, and proven stature and independence." Of course, maybe it's the American voters who need to know this so that they're a little more careful about who they vote for in the future-- because America, unlike Alberto Gonzales (pictured above courtesy of Jesus' General)-- does have a future.


UPDATE: WINGNUT HEADS ARE EXPLODING

Gonzales is caught red-handed and the right wing apologists for fascism-- or parties to it-- are winging their hands. Here is what some of the most execrable are saying (courtesy of my pal Charles from myleftnutmeg.com):

The pathetic asslicker Jonah Goldberg at National Review thinks it may be better to not refer to Gonzales as a liar but to call him "deeply, deeply, confused, out of touch and unprepared to give a press conference which was supposed to put an end to the 'scandal' and instead poured gasoline on it at a time when his boss, the President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief, had vastly more important things to deal with. 'Maybe, just maybe, a good "CEO" would have asked his staff, 'Hey, before I unequivocally tell the world I was out of the loop, let's double check and make sure I wasn't in the loop. Okay?'"

Some kkklown who calls himself The Captain, asks "...Have we had enough yet? I understand the argument that if we allow the Democrats to bounce Gonzales, they'll just aim for more, but Gonzales made himself the target here with what looks like blatant deception. I don't think we do ourselves any good by defending the serially changing stories coming out of Gonzales' inept administration at Justice. One cannot support an Attorney General who misleads Congress, allows his staffers to mislead Congress, and deceives the American people, regardless of whether an R or a D follows his name or the majority control of Congress."

Far right blog Powerline says "politics aside, Gonzales should not continue to serve if he lacks the president's confidence. I have no idea where Bush is on this, but my confidence in Gonzales, already shaky, would diminish if it turns out that Gonzales misrepresented his involvement in the firings to the press."

Do you feel their pain?


UPDATE: FINALLY PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT IMPEACHING GONZALES INSTEAD OF JUST ASKING HIM TO RESIGN OR ASKING BUSH TO FIRE HIM

Impeachment is what we need-- a good healthy dose of it to shake off the feeling that we are the inevitable victims of Bush's authoritarian little set-up. Gonzales is a good first step. And Bob Kuttner breaks the ice tomorrow at the Boston Globe.

THE HOUSE of Representatives should begin impeachment proceedings against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Gonzales, the nation's highest legal officer, has been point man for serial assaults against the rule of law, most recently in the crude attempt to politicize criminal prosecutions. Obstruction of a prosecution is a felony, even when committed by the attorney general.
The firings of US attorneys had multiple political motives, all contrary to longstanding practice. In some cases, Republican politicians and the White House were angry that prosecutors were not going after Democrats with sufficient zeal. In other cases, they wanted the prosecutors to lighten up on Republicans. In still others, exemplary prosecutors were shoved aside to make room for rising Republican politicians being groomed for higher office.
It's hard to imagine a more direct assault on the impartiality of the law or the professionalism of the criminal justice system. There are several other reasons to remove Gonzales, all involving his cavalier contempt for courts and liberties of citizens, most recently in the FBI's more than 3,000 cases of illegal snooping on Americans.
Why impeachment? In our system of checks and balances, the Senate confirms members of the Cabinet, but impeachment for cause is the only way to remove them. The White House, by refusing to cooperate, has now left Congress no other recourse.

MONTANA GOP: WELL AT LEAST HE DIDN'T SHOOT ELSIE IN THE FACE AND CLAIM HE THOUGHT SHE WAS AN ELK

I hope you didn't think that when John Tester defeated Conrad Burns all of Montana's political problems would get flushed down the toilet with Burns. No such luck. The state legislature is crawling with Republicans-- and the worst kind. Last week two state Reps, Scott Boggio and Elsie Arntzen went out for "dinner" and got thoroughly plastered. A highway patrolman noticed Boggio's vehicle careening down the road. Then he noticed the vehicle had no license plate. Then he noticed the vehicle slammed into the curb. Then he pulled it over and was confronted with the drunken Republican representative.

Boggio pleaded guilty to drunk driving but-- and when we're talking about Republicans, there are always "buts," even when they get caught red-handed-- he had some lame excuse for endangering his constituents with his unsafe driving. "Well, I guess that, you know, anyone who goes out to dinner and has a few drinks along with their meal can get a DUI."

Elsie was awake while all this happened but she wasn't charged since the officer didn't find an open container of booze in the front seat and she wasn't driving. She's a member of the Yellowstone County DUI task Force but she claims she didn't notice Boggio was drunk. "I would have never done that," she claimed. Boggio is making quite a name for himself with law enforcement officials. A few months ago he was hauled in for the unauthorized shooting of an elk, something, apparently common among Montana Republican legislators. (The nice photo is of State Senator Joe Balyeat, like Boggio a convicted elk poacher.)

TOM DeLAY AND DICK ARMEY GRUDGE MATCH CONTINUES-- ARMEY INVOKES JERRY JEFF WALKER, DWT COUNTERS WITH WILCO

OK, everyone now knows former right-wing partners in crime, Tom DeLay and Dick Armey, hate each other's guts. DeLay's ghost writer viciously attacked Armey in the silly book he wrote under DeLay's name, a book even DeLay hasn't bothered to read. After DeLay stumbled all over himself when confronted on live TV with a quote from "his" book calling Armey names-- he claimed he never wrote it and then claimed he didn't have his glasses when the interviewer offered to show him the underlined passage-- Armey struck back.

In recent months, he's called Mr. DeLay "sneaky" and "conniving" and said he should never have been entrusted with public office. Two days after the GOP lost Congress in November's elections, he published an essay in the Wall Street Journal that implicitly attacked Mr. DeLay and his tactics, lamenting that the vision of smaller government that propelled Republicans to power in 1994 had given way to an emphasis on social wedge issues meant to rile the GOP base. Borrowing a phrase from the corrupt superlobbyist and DeLay ally Jack Abramoff, he complained that Congress had turned into a "favor factory."

In today's Dallas Morning News Armey suggested Jerry Jeff Walker had a song that answered DeLay quite well, "The Pot Can't Call the Kettle Black." You Tube doesn't have it but don't fret, I'm not going to offer you "Mr. Bojangles," "Rodeo Cowboy" or that "L.A. Freeway" song. I found something far better, Wilco doing "Pot Kettle Black" live. I hope this makes Mr. Armey's point. If only more Republicans would spend some time listening to Wilco!

HOUSE GIVES BUSH $124 BILLION ABOVE HIS FAKE BUDGET AND TELLS HIM TO END IRAQ WAR BY AUGUST 2008

It looks like the first part of Speaker Pelosi's grand strategy to start easing the U.S. out of Iraq worked today-- by a hair. The House just "passed a $124 billion emergency spending bill that sets binding benchmarks for progress in Iraq, establishes tough readiness standards for deploying U.S. troops abroad and requires the withdrawal of American combat forces from Iraq by the end of August 2008. After four hours of floor debate yesterday and today, the House approved the bill by a vote of 218 to 212. One lawmaker voted present and three did not vote."

The U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans Health and Iraq Accountability Act "includes military funding beyond the level requested by Bush, adding money for health care for returning service members and veterans in the wake of a scandal over the treatment of wounded outpatient soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center... [It] requires the Pentagon to stick to its standards for training and equipping combat troops being sent abroad. It also enforces rules that limit the tours of deployed troops to no more than 13 months and stipulate that they have to stay home for at least a year between tours."


Bush's says he'll veto it, of course. Democrats united behind Pelosi in the fight for public opinion that now looms as the Bush Regime goes on the attack. Rep. Patrick Murphy, the first Iraq War vet elected to Congress made the case to his colleagues, a case Bush should listen to before he irresponsibly takes out the veto pen he never used against Bridges to Nowhere or for any of the horrible legislation his rubber stamp Congress passed before voters in every part of the country defeated the Republicans in November. "To those on the other side of the aisle who are opposed, I want to ask you the same questions that my gunner asked me when I was leading a convoy up and down Ambush Alley one day. He said, ‘Sir, what are we doing over here? What’s our mission? When are these Iraqis going to come off the sidelines and fight for their own country?’ So to my colleagues across the aisle-- your taunts about supporting our troops ring hollow if you are still unable to answer those questions now four years later."

Speaker Pelosi, also addressing the rubber stamp Republicans, seemed to take aim at Bush directly. "Rather than sending more troops into the chaos that is the Iraqi civil war, we must be focused on bringing the war to an end. We can do that by passing this bill that transforms the performance benchmarks that have already been endorsed by President Bush and the Iraqi government, into requirements…Benchmarks without deadlines are just words. Four years of this war, words are not enough."

Yesterday I mentioned that, although some members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus had voted against the bill, the Caucus as a whole threw in with Pelosi on this in the sincere hope that it would actually lead to an end to the calamity and catastrophes Bush's policies and agenda in the Middle East has dragged our country into. Only two Republicans, Gilchrest (MD) and Jones (NC) were decent enough and patriotic enough to break through their misplaced partisan loyalties to vote "yes." Most of the opponents in the Democratic Party were reactionary, war-supporting Blue Dogs. In fact, let's take a look at the Iraq-related voting records of the 14 Democrats who voted "no."

There were 44 roll calls in the House between October 10, 2002 (the 4 votes to authorize the use of force in Iraq) and May 25, 2005. There were only 4 Democrats who heroically voted against Bush on every single roll call-- Raul Grijalva (AZ), Maurice Hinchey (NY), James McGovern (MA) and Donald Payne (NJ). They score 100. There were 101 Republicans who voted with Bush on every single Iraq-related bill. That is the very definition of "rubber stamp Republican." Each of those shameless Republican whores scored a zero.

Let's examine the voting records of the 14 Democrats who voted "no" on the supplemental bill. Among the committed war opponents who voted no as a symbolic protest against sending more billions in Iraq were Barbara Lee (CA) and Lynn Woolsey (CA) who each has a score of 97.73; John Lewis (GA) with a score of 95.35; Maxine Waters (CA) with a 93.02 score; and Diane Watson (the congresswoman who represents the home of DWT World Headquarters) with 90.70. Those are the members who have consistently put their votes where their mouths were and have what I would call unblemished anti-war records. Democratic presidential candidate Dennis "Give Me Face Time" Kucinich also voted "no" and he has an opportunistic though somewhat anti-war voting record (with a score of 79.07). Michael Michaud (ME) has a similar so-so voting record (77.50) and he joined the reactionaries for whatever reason today. The rest are reactionaries and war-mongers who have consistently supported Bush from Day One and continue to push for endless war:
John Barrow (GA)- 63.64
Dan Boren (OK)- 63.64
Lincoln Davis (TN)- 62.50
Michael McNulty (NY)- 61.36
Gene Taylor (MS)- 56.82
Jim Matheson (UT)- 52.27
Jim Marshall (GA)- 41.94


A final thought on this: the DCCC has asked Democrats who oppose the war to send them contributions today. Keep in mind that money you send to the DCCC goes directly to prop up unpopular Blue Dogs who vote against Democratic principles and values every day, people like John Barrow and Jim Marshall in Georgia. If you're in a giving mood today, I'd like to suggest that you send your donations instead to courageous men and women representing Republican-leaning districts who nonetheless voted their consciences today and are helping to end this disastrous war-- a war that would never have happened without members like Barrow and Marshall, not to mention Steny Hoyer and other Democrats who have supported Bush every step of the way. All the congressmen and candidates endorsed by Blue America are working hard to end the war. That's where you should donate money. May I suggest starting with Patrick Murphy? Even $5.00 at that link will show Murphy, or any of the others, that you understand and appreciate what he's trying to do for our country. Thanks.

BILL CLINTON DOESN'T WANT TO FACE UP TO HILLARY'S PRO-WAR VOTING RECORD

Bill Clinton senses now that the biggest chink in his wife's armor is her support for the Bush Regime's Iraq War policy. It's the one small hope progressives have to keep her from getting the Democratic Party nomination. "It’s just not fair to say that people who voted for the resolution wanted war,” Clinton said, ingenuously. "Speaking to hundreds of supporters on conference call, the former president said, 'I don't have a problem with anything Barack Obama [has] said on this,' but 'to characterize Hillary and Obama’s positions on the war as polar opposites is ludicrous. This dichotomy that's been set up to allow him to become the raging hero of the anti-war crowd on the Internet is just factually inaccurate.' The ex-president’s aggressive defense of his wife’s position revealed frustration in the Clinton camp over how the issue is playing into the already-overheated presidential campaign.

Perhaps they could alleviate that frustration if they could go back and change history. And history is a lot more than one vote for the war, as the Clintons subtly try to mislead audiences into thinking. There were 6 roll calls authorizing the use of force in Iraq on October 10-11, 2002. On those 6 use of force authorization bills, Hillary voted with Bush and the Republican rubber stamps 5 times. Though her husband wouldn't agree, that alone should disqualify her from carrying the Democratic presidential banner.


In all, looking at the Iraq War related votes Hillary ranks the 30th best out of 50-- tied with war supporters Tom Carper and Bill Nelson, not quite as bad as war supporter Joe Biden but not as good as war supporter Ken Salazar. And she certainly isn't in the same ballpark with anti-war Democrats like Barbara Boxer, Ted Kennedy, Frank Lautenberg, Richard Durbin, or Russ Feingold. She is better than any Republican. Whoopie. This is our leader?

WHAT ABOUT THE FEDERAL PROSECUTORS THAT DIDN'T GET FIRED? WHAT HAVE THEY BEEN UP TO? LET'S LOOK AT THE CASE OF STEVEN GRILES

Bush's corruption plagued Department of Justice has been going very, very easy on apprehended Republican crooks who made up the backbone of the party's very lucrative Culture of Corruption. There have been no twenty year sentences. There haven't even been any 10 year sentences; not even a fiver. I guess engaging in a conspiracy to steal billions and billions of dollars from the American taxpayer isn't all that serious to the Bush regime. Have you noticed this pattern of letting the worst crooks plead guilty to some ancillary crime-- like lying to investigators-- in return for them never having to be tried for the underlying crime they were caught at?

Today one of Abramoff's minions will be just the latest Bush Regime monstrosity to get off with a tsk, tsk. "Former Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles will plead guilty to one count of obstruction of justice in the Jack Abramoff corruption investigation, The Associated Press has learned. Griles, an oil and gas lobbyist who became an architect of President Bush's energy policies while at the Interior Department between July 2001 and July 2005, is the highest ranking Bush administration official implicated in the Washington lobbying scandal. The former No. 2 official at the Interior Department has agreed to a felony plea admitting that he lied five times to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and its investigators about his relationship with Abramoff, people involved in the case told the AP. Griles will admit in federal court Friday that he concealed that he had a unique relationship with Abramoff..."

Even worse than Griles not being tossed into a prison or bottomless pit for a couple decades like he deserves-- top sentence would be 10 months, most of which could be served at home-- "prosecutors (and, please note, these are the guys Gonzales and Rove did not fire-- dropped earlier allegations that Griles did anything improper to help Abramoff or gained anything of value from the former Republican lobbyist... [and will] not require Griles to help investigators with their grand jury probe. Who's side are these prosecutors on? I guess that should be pretty clear, right?

For Republicrook apparachik Griles the bottom line is he admits he told a little fib to the Senate and he walks away from a major crime spree for which he can never be tried under a real Department of Justice.

In 2005, Griles testified before the Senate Indian Affairs committee that "there was no special relationship for Mr. Abramoff in my office. It never did exist."

He has now admitted, however, that he had frequent contact with Abramoff through Federici, the founder of a conservative environmental group with close ties to former Interior secretary Gale Norton. Federici had served as an official on one of Norton's political campaigns in Colorado.

Griles was a controversial political appointee from the earliest days of his tenure at Interior under Norton. He was attacked by environmentalists and by the department's inspector general for maintaining ties to energy and mining companies that were once his lobbying clients...

E-mails released as part of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee investigation of Abramoff's lobbying activities detailed contacts Griles had with Abramoff or Federici, who was working as the lobbyist's go-between to Griles. Griles told the panel then that he had little to do with Indian affairs and never tried to intercede on behalf of Abramoff's clients.

But a former Interior Department lawyer testified that Griles inserted himself in tribal issues, including a land issue that would determine whether a small Louisiana tribe, the Jena Band of Choctaws, would be able to build a casino.

Abramoff enlisted the aid of numerous members of Congress and anti-gambling groups to crush the effort because it could draw away casino business from his clients. Just as it appeared the department would grant the Jena's land claim anyway, Griles turned up with a binder full of congressional letters opposing the deal-- a binder prepared by Abramoff-- and sought to press it on department officials.

Last week we covered Griles' live-in lover, Sue Ellen Wooldridge, who is also implicated in this bribery mess and who had boasted about biting off sheep's balls. "Last March, while at the Justice Department, Wooldridge and Griles purchased a $980,000 vacation home on Kiawah Island, S.C., with Don R. Duncan, a lobbyist for oil giant ConocoPhillips. Wooldridge later signed a consent decree on behalf of the federal government giving the oil company more time to pay millions of dollars in fines and meet pollution-cleanup standards at some of its refineries."


Meanwhile more of the prosecutors that Gonzales and Rove decided to not fire, have moved to give Abramoff a "Get Out of Jail Early" card. Yesterday's Washington Post reported that "federal prosecutors took the first steps toward reducing the prison sentence of former Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, currently scheduled for release in 2011 for a Florida fraud conviction," presumably saving Bush the embarrassment of having to pardon his old friend who helped finance the Republican ascension to political dominance. Abramoff has still not been charged in the murder case of his ex-partner Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis.


UPDATE: SO JUST HOW PARTISAN DO YOU HAVE TO BE TO NOT GET FIRED FROM THE BUSH REGIME?

Well, it looks like you have to pretty much be a complete and total partisan hack to keep your job with these folks. Today's McClatchy papers carry a scathing indictment about the way Rove and Gonzales have politicized the DoJ. Since Bush wormed his way into power "the Justice Department has backed tougher state voter identification laws and steered U.S. attorneys toward investigating voter fraud policies that critics say have been intended to suppress Democratic votes."

Since 2005, McClatchy Newspapers has found, Bush has appointed at least three U.S. attorneys who had worked in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division when it was rolling back long-standing voting rights policies aimed at protecting predominantly poor, minority voters.

Another newly installed U.S. attorney, Tim Griffin in Little Rock, Ark., was accused of participating in efforts to suppress Democratic votes in Florida during the 2004 presidential election while he was research director for the Republican National Committee...

Taken together, legal experts and other critics say, the replacement of the U.S. attorneys and the changes in Justice Department voting rights policies suggest that the Bush administration may have been using its law enforcement powers for partisan political purposes.

The department's civil rights division, for example, supported a Georgia voter identification law that a court later said discriminated against poor minority voters. It also declined to oppose an unusual Texas redistricting plan that helped expand the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. That plan was partially reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Frank DiMarino, a former federal prosecutor who served six U.S. attorneys in Florida and Georgia during an 18-year Justice Department career, said that too much emphasis on voter fraud investigations “smacks of trying to use prosecutorial power to investigate and potentially indict political enemies.”

Several former voting rights lawyers, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of antagonizing the administration, said the division’s political employees reversed the recommendations of career lawyers in key cases and transferred or drove out most of the unit’s veteran attorneys.

In this week's hearings at the House Judiciary Committee former voting rights section chief Joseph Rich testified that longtime career lawyers whose views differed from those of political appointees were routinely "reassigned or stripped of major responsibilities." He said that nearly half the attorneys in the voting rights section have been transferred to other jobs or have left. He also said he has yet to see evidence of voter fraud on a scale that warrants voter ID laws, which he said are "without exception... supported and pushed by Republicans and objected to by Democrats. I believe it is clear that this kind of law tends to suppress the vote of lower-income and minority voters."

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who will be a Blue America live guest in a couple of weeks, and who chaired the hearing, pointed out that “The more stringent requirements you put on voting in order to get rid of alleged voter fraud, the more you’re cutting down on legitimate people voting.” Which is, of course, exactly what the Republicans have been trying to do for decades.

David Iglesias of New Mexico has said he thinks “the voter fraud issue was the foundation” for his firing and the complaints about his failure to pursue corruption matters involving Democrats were “the icing on the cake.”

John McKay, the ousted U.S. attorney for western Washington state, looked into allegations of voter fraud against Democrats during the hotly contested governor’s race in 2004. He said that later, while being interviewed for a federal judgeship by top Bush aides, he was asked to respond to criticism of his inquiry in which no charges were brought. He didn’t get the judgeship.

DOES THE GOP HAVE A FUTURE? YES-- A VERY, VERY BLEAK ONE

When low-info voters ask me who I'm for, I know they're talking about the presidential race. That one isn't my biggest concern. I'm not enthusiastic about any of the candidates although, symbolically Hillary or Obama would be a step in the right direction. Other than symbolically, it's all going to come down to choosing the ole lesser of two evils. And since the Democrats running are so much the lesser evils than the Republicans running... well, my mind's made up. I'll vote for Hillary against McCain in the general. Now I have to get to work on what's important to me: the 2008 congressional races. But my low-info pals don't want to let go that fast. I mean they don't talk about congressional races on the teevee, just the presidential personalities. But it's simple: Americans are sick of the Republicans and have woken up to their bullshit and, despite themselves, the Democrats will win. Short of Al Sharpton, any Democrat will beat any Republican.

You don't believe me? Today's L.A. Times is reporting that affinity to the GOP and to Republican values has been in a steady and decline for 5 years. All it took was one year of George Bush.

The survey, by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for People and the Press, found a "dramatic shift" in political party identification since 2002, when Republicans and Democrats were at rough parity. Now, half of those surveyed identified with or leaned toward Democrats, while only 35% aligned with Republicans.

What's more, the survey found the public attitudes are drifting toward Democrats' values: Support for government aid to the disadvantaged has grown since the mid-1990s, skepticism about the use of military force has increased and support for traditional family values has edged down.

Those findings suggest that Republicans' political challenges reach beyond the unpopularity of the war in Iraq and Bush.

The country is becoming more tolerant, which is always bad news for a regime based on fear and authoritarianism. The identification between the GOP and George Bush could prove to be as debilitating for Republicans as was the identification with Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover, two conservative presidents-- neither nearly so extreme as Bush-- who ushered in 2 decades of Democratic political domination.

McCAIN vs CLUB FOR GROWTH, ROUND 3

A few days ago I mentioned the vicious attack the far right Club For Growth launched against McCain. They've never been big fans of his but now they have their panties all in a bunch because he announced he's not attending their big annual HateFest in Florida March 31. McCain, lamely hit back at them, but he's so old, senile and ineffectual, that they were easily able to turn his response into an ad against him. I hate seeing the right-wingers tearing each other to shreds (not really).




UPDATE: McCAIN ON THE RUN

The far right has Mr. Straight Talk Express backing away as fast as possible from some of his signature policies. His latest flip-flop has to do with immigration. McCain has slithered out of cooperating with Ted Kennedy on a consensus immigration bill.

The erosion of the unlikely political partnership that brought the liberal Kennedy and the conservative McCain together on immigration suggests a tough road ahead for passing a sweeping immigration measure this year. Further complicating efforts to find consensus, a group of Republicans is working with the White House to draft an alternative bill.

McCain's hesitancy about joining Kennedy on the same issue they worked together on in the previous Congress also speaks to an emerging dynamic in the Republican presidential race.

McCain has encountered anger from hard-line immigration foes on the campaign trail, particularly over an aspect in last year's bill that would have allowed most undocumented immigrants to work toward citizenship. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, one of McCain's rivals for the GOP nomination, has been especially sharp in his condemnation of McCain's approach to immigration.

Quote of the day: The Daily Show's John Oliver explains just what's at stake for Karl Rove if those mean Dems force him to testify under oath

"If Karl Rove knew he'd one day be forced to testify under oath about advice he gave the president, he'd have to limit that advice to things that weren't shameful, illegal or spectacularly boneheaded."
--John Oliver, to Jon Stewart on last night's Daily Show

In the excitement of the moment last night, I actually started transcribing the inspiredly loony Jon Stewart-John Oliver Daily Show update on the pursuit of congressional testimony from administration officials in the Justice Department scandals. I imagined getting it up before it even aired on the West Coast. Oh well, stuff happens.

Happily, Washingtonpost.com's Dan Froomkin has a video link along with the lovely Oliver line quoted above.

(Dan also quotes a great Jon Stewart line: "President Bush gave an impromptu press conference yesterday in the White House's Diplomatic Reception room--presumably because the Petulant Tantrum room was booked.")


WHILE WE'RE ON THE SUBJECT OF THE PRESIDENT ALLOWING
THE KIDS ON HIS TEAM TO TESTIFY, LET TOM TOLES WEIGH IN
[Click anywhere on this to enlarge it]

BUSH REGIME SAYS "TRUST ME"-- AS THEY CONTINUE TO LIE AND TWIST LIKE THERE IS NO TOMORROW

It looks like the Bush Regime will do anything to prevent Rove from getting on a witness stand and taking an oath to tell the truth before he testifies. I wonder why. (Just kidding.) One of their techniques is to try to claim that the demand for sworn testimony from presidential advisers is "unprecedented" and "highly unusual in any White House." This is patently absurd, especially coming from Bush's chief liar, Tony Snow, who was at the head of the pack baying for sworn testimony from Clinton's White House. The hypocrisy from this crew never ceases to amaze. I don't see how anyone can take them seriously since nothing they say is ever true. Henry Waxman, however, does take them seriously and he issued a letter yesterday to set the record straight (as if any of them cared a whit for truth or reality) and showed how under his predecessor as the House Oversight Committee chair, Dan Burton (R-IN), issued 1,052 subpoenas targeting Democratic Party or Clinton administration officials. Waxman points out that the Clinton Administration officials serving in the identical capacities in which Miers and Rove served and serve Bush, were cooperative and did testify before Congress on the record and under oath. "141 individuals who worked in the Clinton administration, including top advisers to the president, spent 568 hours in deposition before the [Oversight] committee staff."

Meanwhile "Democrats angrily rejected Bush's offer to grant a limited number of lawmakers private interviews with the aides with no transcript and without swearing them in. Republicans counseled restraint, but at least one, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, backed the"... Senate Judiciary Committee joining the House Judiciary Committee in authorizing subpoenas for recalcitrant Regime criminals who refuse to appear voluntarily.

The big buzz on the case today-- well, one of the big buzzes-- is that "three of the eight federal prosecutors ousted by the Justice Department as poor performers ranked in the top 10 for prosecutions and convictions by the nation's 93 U.S. Attorneys, an analysis of court records shows. Court records covering the last five years show large volumes of immigration cases helped U.S. attorneys Paul Charlton of Phoenix, Carol Lam of San Diego and David Iglesias of New Mexico consistently place in the upper tier among their peers. The analysis includes each U.S. attorney's per capita record of prosecutions, convictions and prison sentences." But did anyone ever take the Regime's after the fact lies about "poor performance" seriously?

Snow job du jour was on Good Morning America: "Do you want Karl Rove on TV or do you want the truth?" I guess the two concepts are incompatible? Earlier Snow had threatened Congress that if they issue the subpoenas Bush's "reasonable"-- all Regimites have been instructed to never use the word "offer" in regard to this case without prefacing it with "reasonable"-- offer is "withdrawn."

But Snow wasn't the only one of TV. The good guys put up Patrick Leahy (on both NBC's Today and CNN's American Morning where he paraphrased John Lennon: "All I want to know is what the truth is" and "All I want to know is if prosecutors were manipulated." Yesterday Schumer said something similar on CNN's Situation Room: "The president says he wants to get to the truth. Well, then what's wrong with an oath and what's wrong with transcripts?... Our goal-- get out the facts, get to the bottom of it." Later on Countdown Schumer turned the Regime's obsession with The Godfather (Bush calls Gonzales Fredo and everyone calls Bush Sonny): "To paraphrase The Godfather, the president has basically given us an offer we can't accept. ... Any lawyer worth his salt will tell you, no legal proceeding is worth the paper it's written on unless there's a transcript, unless there's sworn testimony. And if the White House wants to get to the truth, and I hope they do, that's the obvious way to do it."


UPDATE: DID BUSH USE THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE TO KILL THE DELAY INVESTIGATION?

Our old pal Nathan Wilcox thinks so. He explains why over at the Burnt Orange Report. "In the fall of 2005 dominos were falling fast in the Jack Abramoff investigation. And they were falling in one very clear direction, closer and closer to Tom DeLay." One DeLay henchman after another was being rolled up by the Feds-- crooks like Michael Scanlon, Tony Rudy, Ed Buckham... But suddenly it stopped-- dead cold. "...Something very fishy did indeed take place. The lead investigator [Noel Hillman] was given a Judgeship, a new investigator with connections to the GOP machine was appointed and presto...no more momentum in the investigation." There's more at the link-- and it gets worse.

SHOULD PROGRESSIVES SUPPORT PELOSI'S IRAQ WAR SUPPLEMENTAL SPENDING BILL?

Pelosi and other pragmatic Democrats looking for a solution to the impasse over the Iraq war, want to pass a supplemental funding bill-- $123 billion or so-- to continue fighting it... but with a few stipulations that might perhaps cause Bush to scale back on his ambitious plans to sink us deeper and deeper into a war with no possible end. So the Democrats are split. Many are trusting Pelosi (who is pretty trustworthy on Iraq, as her voting record shows) and Hoyer (who is totally untrustworthy on Iraq, as his Bush-supporting record shows). Others, die-hard, hard-core Bush supporters like Jim Marshall (D-GA) and Dan Boren (D-OK), say the bill hampers Bush's ability to fight the war and they are opposing it. Many of the Democrats who have voting records that clearly indicate they are the most committed to ending the war-- men and women like Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), John Lewis (D-GA), Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), Pete Stark (D-CA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), and Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)-- are opposing the bill because it doesn't do much of anything definitive except fund the Bush Regime's psychotic blood lust.

Today's Hill has a decent explanation of the dynamics here-- as well as a list of who stands where, including the undecideds.

It's interesting to see slimy and deceptive warmongers like Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer working with proven peace advocates-- like MoveOn.org-- to get what both sides feel is the most that can be achieved-- a suitable compromise that Bush has already promised to veto. Their efforts leave me somewhat nonplused, though not without respect for their motives. David Sirota is someone I trust implicitly. His advice to the Progressive Caucus was, basically, fight for all you can get but, in the end, vote for the bill.

"As an organizer I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be," wrote Saul Alinsky, one of the 20th Century’s most successful progressive leaders. "That we accept the world as it is does not in any sense weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be-- it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be. That means working in the system."

These words are as important this week as they were 35 years ago when they were first published in the book Rules for Radicals. With the House expected to vote this week on binding legislation to end the war in 2008, a group of Congress' most distinguished progressive heroes is undecided about whether to vote yes or no. The indecision is entirely understandable. Democratic leaders have attached their binding legislation to a bill providing ongoing military funding, and many progressives understandably do not want to vote for a single dollar more for anything that could be construed as fueling the war.

The question, then, is simple: Should these progressives vote yes and accept the congressional world as it is right now-– a world filled with a unified Republican caucus that will do anything to continue the war indefinitely and a group of egotistical, pro-war Blue Dog Democrats who will do anything to lavish attention on themselves as supposedly "tough?" Or, should they view the congressional world as they wish it would be and vote no, sending the bill down to defeat?

Sirota acknowledges that it's a tough choice. He says he trusts the progressive credentials of the bill's chief architect, David Obey. Sirota's interpretation of the bill is that-- along with the billions it grants Bush to continue his aggressive and catastrophic policies-- it will provide for a beginning of redeployment by the end of March, 2008 and completes it by September of that same year. "It’s clear that publicly packaging the bill as a moderate compromise is a tactic designed to either coerce or give cover to Blue Dog Democrats to vote for the bill."

In the end Sirota is certain that progressives-- the real ones, not the fakers-- should hold out for concessions and then vote yes. "Play hardball," he advises "then proudly hold your head up and vote 'yes.'"

To date, progressives in Congress have done an outstanding job. Their holding out has forced the Democratic leadership to resist Blue Dog pressure to eliminate language from the supplemental that ends the war by September 2008. That is a major victory.

Now, in the final hours before the vote (set tentatively for this week), they must aim for a concession that the leadership can grant but that does not endanger the binding language that is the prize within reach (a bird in hand…). And there is plenty that can be demanded. How about a letter from Speaker Pelosi committing the House to a separate vote on a specific date on a bill cutting off funding entirely? Or, what about a commitment from Jack Murtha that the regular Defense Appropriations Bill, which comes up soon, includes language mandating an end to the war? The options are limitless.


But when the supplemental bill comes up, the progressive vote must be a "yes" one. Remember, I say this understanding that there are differences of opinion among progressive lawmakers on this one. I also say it as a committed antiwar progressive, as someone who agrees that this is not the ideal situation, and as a person who has been slandered with "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" straw men. But this is no straw man. No war in American history has ever ended with just one vote. It takes multiple votes, a gamed-out legislative strategy and, perhaps most importantly, a willingness to, in the words of Saul Alinsky, "start from where the world is, as it is." Only if we do that, will we ever have that "world as we would like it to be."

Public debate starts this afternoon and Congress' first Iraq War vet, Patrick Murphy, kicked it off with a short speech in favor of the bill.


UPDATE: ON THE OTHER HAND...

I keep getting e-mails from MoveOn urging me to contact my congresswoman, Diane Watson, with the goal of trying to influence her to vote for the supplemental Iraq financing bill. I can understand why an anti-war congressperson would vote for it and I respect that position. Personally, I don't hold it and if I was in Congress I'd vote against it. The Progressive Caucus folded up its tent today-- as Sirota suggested they should-- and, although several members will still vote no, the Caucus as a whole will give Pelosi the margin she needs for victory. Here's the press release:

PROGRESSIVES DECISIVE IN SUPPLEMENTAL DEBATE

(Washington, DC) - After two grueling weeks of meetings, Progressive members of Congress brought forth an agreement that provided the momentum to pass a supplemental spending bill that, for the first time, establishes a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

Congresswomen Barbara Lee (D-CA), Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Diane Watson (D-CA) have led Congressional opposition to the war in Iraq since before it started and have consistently voted against funding for the war as a matter of conscience. Still, they decided that they could not stand in the way of the passage of a bill that would establish a clear timeline for ending the war, especially if the failure of that bill would mean the passage of a supplemental without any restrictions.

After a painstaking series of meetings with members of the Progressive Caucus and Out of Iraq Caucus and other members of Congress, the group agreed that, while they could not vote for the bill themselves, they would not block its passage.

"As someone who opposed this war from the beginning, I have voted against every single penny for this war as a matter of conscience, but now I find myself in the excruciating position of being asked to choose between voting for funding for the war or establishing timelines to end it," said Lee. "I have struggled with this decision, but I finally decided that, while I cannot betray my conscience, I cannot stand in the way of passing a measure that puts a concrete end date on this unnecessary war."

"Although the debate on this supplemental appropriation has been heart wrenching, I have always been clear on my position. While we respect the decision of our colleagues who will support this legislation, those of us who believe that this is a vote of conscience will remain steadfast in our opposition," said Waters.

"The American public knows a simple truth: you can't be against this war, and vote for $100 billion dollars to continue it. Let me make myself very clear-- I will not stop, I will not rest, and I will not back down in my fight until every last American soldier is home safely to their families," said Woolsey.

TIM WALBERG PULLS HIS HEAD OUT OF HIS ASS-- JUST LONG ENOUGH TO SHOW HOW CLUELESS HE IS BEFORE STICKING IT BACK IN AGAIN

If it wasn't bad enough that Tim Walberg is a vicious little racist piece of crap and an extreme right-wing of neo-Nazi bent, it also just so happens that this blight on the great state of Michigan also happens to be one of the most ignorant members of Congress, right up there with Know Nothings like Michele Bachmann (the sneaky puker), Mean Jean Schmidt and Patrick McHenry.

Yesterday the fanatic wingnut freshman from Michigan's 7th CD, considered one of the most likely congress members to be defeated next year, blurted out some discarded Rovian talking points on WILS-AM and kicked up a shit-storm. He claimed that the troops he's supposedly talked to who have returned from Iraq "indicate to me that 80 to 85 percent, in a conservative fashion, of the country is reasonably under control, at least as well as Detroit or Chicago or any of our other big cities. That's an encouraging sign."


When the talk show host mentioned he'd never heard Iraq compared to Detroit before, Walberg plowed on, cluelessly: "Well, in fact, in many places it's as safe and cared for as Detroit or Harvey, Ill., or some other places that have trouble with armed violence that takes place on occasion."

I'd like to recommend that Walberg and other of the self-satisfied and willfully or congenitally ignorant little shits who dominate the Republican Party read Imperial Hubris to learn what exactly they have stirred up in the Middle East. That don't have the foggiest. And they're our leaders. God help us! The fight we're in now is real, very real, and with losers like Bush and Walberg leading the charge we're really doomed.

IMPEACH CHENEY FIRST

As more and more people figure out who Alberto Gonzales is and figure out what a U.S. Attorney is and what the Bush Regime did to them, they seem to feel Gonzales should resign. According to Bob Novak, most Republican legislators feel that way too. The Regime seems to be circling the toilet. Let's contemplate it going around and around and around today by listening to a familiar little tune:

IF A TREE FALLS IN THE FOREST WILL BUSH HEAR IT-- IF IT DOESN'T FALL ON HIS HEAD?

In the L.A. Times this morning, Richard Serrano reported that "Senior Justice Department officials began drafting memos this month listing specific reasons why they had fired eight U.S. attorneys, intending to cite performance problems such as insubordination, leadership failures and other missteps if needed to convince angry congressional Democrats that the terminations were justified." The lists were put together as part of the massive Bush Regime cover-up they are attempting-- poorly-- to perpetrate in front of the eyes of a suddenly more awake American Congress, media and public.

As Harry Reid pointed out yesterday, lying, half-truths, secrecy, cover-up, deception have been the hallmarks of the Bush Regime since it's first days in power. That's why Rove-- the worst of the entire lot of these criminals-- must be compelled to tell the truth... or face prosecution.

So, appropriately, the House and Senate committees looking into the cascading scandals emerging from the Bush DoJ have rejected Bush's offer to let them have an informal, off-the-record chit chat session with the criminals involved with turning American Justice on its head. Replying to his bluster about "fishing expeditions" and "executive privilege," they voted this morning to issue subpoenas to the offenders.

On the House side, Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers said his staff is still negotiating with the Regime and that he would hold off on serving the subpoenas while negotiating was under way. Today's CongressDaily points out that "the decision to delay serving the subpoenas put off a constitutional showdown between the executive and legislative branches that would probably end up in court. But the ceasefire might not last long; shortly after Conyers spoke, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said the offer to allow private interviews but not sworn testimony was not negotiable."

It is no coincidence that one of the strongest voices on the committee opposing subpoenas was that of Florida's most crooked congressman, Tom Feeney, who was part of the culture of corruption bunch along with Duke Cunningham, Duncan Hunter, Virgil Goode, John Doolittle and Jerry Lewis, who had the most to gain from the firing of U.S. Attorney Carol Lam. He insisted that subpoenas should not be considered unless the committee turned up even more evidence of criminal behavior of the part of the Regime. Apparently he doesn't understand clearly understands the purpose of an investigation.

Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., said clearing the way for subpoenas put the committee in a position of strength as it negotiated with the White House on access to Rove and others. Democrats contend the prosecutors were fired for political purposes, a view that Feeney seemed to have trouble taking seriously. "I am shocked, just like in 'Casablanca,' that politics might have been involved," Feeney said. Cannon told reporters that Democrats might end up agreeing to Fielding's offer because issuing subpoenas would be a time-consuming process, especially if President Bush followed through on his vow to invoke executive privilege and challenges the subpoenas in court. Democrats "should take what they can get for now" and consider serving subpoenas later in their investigation, he said.

Oh, and speaking of Fox propagandist White House whatever they call him Tony Snow, he had a very different outlook on all these when the crime wasn't the mere destruction of the Justice system of the United States but the very serious matter of an adult president getting a bj from an adult woman. John Aravosis refers us to some quotes from Snow in the Chicago Tribune way back when Clinton was perpetrating real crimes against the Republic-- and impeachment was on the table.

"The wall of separation between Mr. Clinton and his deeds remains strong because minions have stuck to their alibis. But now comes an episode in which the Man from Hope stands alone. It is his recent attempt to claim executive privilege for counselors Bruce Lindsey and Sidney Blumenthal and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"Mr. Clinton can't blame his lawyers for this latest feint. He alone can assert the privilege. The maneuver places him at the heart of his administration's ongoing effort to use executive privilege as a way of concealing the truth about whether the president exposed himself....

"Earlier in this administration, then-White House legal counsel Lloyd Cutler decreed that the White House never would assert privilege in the face of a criminal investigation. He merely was reiterating long-standing executive-branch policy along those lines. President Ronald Reagan didn't invoke privilege in Iran-contra, and neither did President George Bush.

"But precedent is gone, and Mr. Clinton wants to protect conversations about a chubby intern from Hollywood. In so doing, he becomes the first president since Richard Nixon to use executive privilege in a criminal inquiry.

"Evidently, Mr. Clinton wants to shield virtually any communications that take place within the White House compound on the theory that all such talk contributes in some way, shape or form to the continuing success and harmony of an administration. Taken to its logical extreme, that position would make it impossible for citizens to hold a chief executive accountable for anything. He would have a constitutional right to cover up.

"Chances are that the courts will hurl such a claim out, but it will take time.

"One gets the impression that Team Clinton values its survival more than most people want justice and thus will delay without qualm. But as the clock ticks, the public's faith in Mr. Clinton will ebb away for a simple reason: Most of us want no part of a president who is cynical enough to use the majesty of his office to evade the one thing he is sworn to uphold the rule of law.''

UPDATE: OVER ON THE EXTREME RIGHT, NO SYMPATHY FOR GONZALES... OR BUSH

Today's Evans-Novak Political Report isn't exactly brimming over with good news for the Regime. "It is impossible to find a Republican on Capitol Hill who believes either that Alberto Gonzales will survive as attorney general or that he should survive. That typifies the poor congressional relations of the Bush Administration that are rooted in arrogance. And this from the crew that likes these folks! Others are less kind-- including more and more former employees coming out of the woodwork with the horror stories we all knew were there.

COLORADO AND SAN DIEGO REPUBLICANS HAVE TO SETTLE FOR LESSER CANDIDATES IN A TOUGH YEAR

With highly unpopular Colorado extremist Wayne Allard choosing retirement over certain defeat in a re-election bid, it looked like Republicans were uniting behind a relatively mainstream conservative in former Congressman Scott McInnis. Today word comes down that McInnis "may" have changed his mind, opening the door for hard-right radical loon Bob Schaffer to try for the Senate again. (He was already rejected by Colorado voters in 2004.)

This morning's Denver Post  examines the possible reasons McInnis, whose nickname is "McLobbyist," probably won't run. "Not only does the national political environment still show voter dissatisfaction with Republicans, but GOP backers have paused at some of McInnis' past political decisions and current status as a lobbyist. Additionally, former Sen. Bill Armstrong, known as the 'godfather' of the state GOP, isn't backing him, and has thrown his support behind former U.S. Rep. Bob Schaffer..."

Schaffer and Armstrong are both pawns of the religionist right and are totally under the control of James Dobson. Both are also pets of the Greed and Selfishness wing of the GOP, represented by the anti-American Club for Growth. It will be virtually impossible for a candidate as far to the right as Schaffer to capture enough independent and moderate votes to win a statewide election.

And the Republicans in the House have some bad news too. Instead of having entrencher wheeler-dealer Duncan Hunter holding on to California's 52nd CD, they're going to have to make due with his 30 year old son, who is not a resident of California and who is likely to be challenged by other right-wingers in a bitter primary before facing a Democrat.

STOP THE PRESSES!!! BEN NELSON MAY VOTE WITH THE DEMOCRATS

It doesn't happen that frequently but rumors are sweeping Capitol Hill today that renegade "Democrat" Ben Nelson (NE) may actually support his putative political party on something. No exaggeration here: Nelson's voting record is so reactionary and so oriented towards the GOP that it almost makes Lieberman, Landrieu and Baucus appear to be actual Democrats. And when it has come to Bush's war against Iraq, he couldn't have asked for a more supportive rubber stamp than Nelson (well... not counting Lieberman).

So it shocked many people in DC today when Nelson edged closer to the "evolving" Democratic position on the emergency supplemental spending bill that will be voted on in committee tomorrow or Friday. Nelson has worked furiously behind the scenes to make the bill more acceptable to his allies in the GOP. (Last week he joined the Republicans in defeating a similar measure, seeking to begin a phased redeployment out of Iraq by March 31, 2008, on the Senate floor.) Nelson is now saying he's ok with "benchmarks" for the Iraqi puppet government as long as there is no mention of a timeline for withdrawal.

"What I've supported and will continue to support are conditions for staying," Nelson said. "We should certainly look at whether the Iraqi government is sustaining itself, and is in a position to govern itself, taking care of getting an oil agreement, getting after the militia and a lot of other issues. So I will support benchmarks and that's my preferred approach." Behind the scenes he's forcing Reid to supply emergency drought aid for Nebraska in return for his vote.


SAY, WHEN BEN NELSON VOTES WITH THE DEMOCRATS,
ASSUMING IT ACTUALLY HAPPENS . . .

. . . uh, does that constitute bipartisan support?--Ken

Absolutely-- or Dan Boren (D-OK), who's just as bad.-- Howie

WHY DOES RALPH REGULA HATE AMERICAN SOLDIERS? AND WILL OHIO VOTERS MAKE HIM WISH HE HAD CHANGED HIS ATTITUDE?

Ralph Regula is 82 years old and not in good shape. The most senior member of the Ohio congressional delegation, he's been muttering about retiring for years. Is this the year? No one knows for sure, but Democrats plan to take the seat regardless. Ohio's 16th CD is south of Cleveland, centered on Canton, and leans Republican but Regula-- with no substantial opposition-- has gotten a declining percentage of votes for several years now. In past years he had pulled in the high and then mid-60s. This year he won with 58% of the vote against an opponent who spent less than $5,000. Both Senator Sherrod Brown and Governor Ted Strickland stomped their Republican opponents in the district last year. The DCCC is targeting Regula's seat for a real race next year.

Regula serves on the House Appropriations Committee and he once made a losing bid for the chairmanship, beaten to the punch in a bitter and divisive GOP civil war by bribe-taking (and bribe-distributing) Jerry Lewis. But when it's come to rubber stamping the Bush Regime's most hideous agenda, Regula and Lewis have been like two peas in a pod. Their most recent team-up effort was in a plot by the GOP members of Appropriations to sabotage a proposal to force the Bush Regime to provide adequate training and equipment for American forces before they were sent to Iraq.

Regula, who voted for every Bush proposal regarding Iraq since the October 10, 2002 Resolution authorizing the use of force-- a record of utter disgrace-- is matched by his total unwillingness to take any responsibility for the well-being of America's military personnel. Again, his voting record on matters regarding our military servicemen and women is one of the worst in Congress, voting against our men and women in uniform every single time-- not even one exception-- there was a roll call in the House. And Regula's record on military veterans has been just as fiendish-- 12 votes on health care for our vets and Regular was 12 for 12 in voting against the interests of our former soldiers. He loves sending them over and yelling "support the troops," but doesn't want to protect them when they're there or care for them when they return.

Regula has been planning on "willing" his district to his son Richard but Richard was defeated for a re-election battle as a Stark County Commissioner last year and is no longer seen as a viable candidate for Congress. Among the strongest potential Democratic candidates are state Sen. John Boccieri, Alliance at-large Councilman Steve Okey, Canton councilman Bill Smuckler, and Ohio appeals court judge Scott Gwin. 2008 could be a good year for congressional Democrats in Ohio, with excellent shots to take out Regula, Mean Jean Schmidt and Deborah Pryce.

DEMOCRATS CALL BUSH'S BLUFF-- ISSUE SUBPOENAS FOR ROVE: NO MAN IS ABOVE THE LAW

This morning the execrable excuse America is stuck with as a "president" challenged the authority of the Congress, the duly elected representatives of the sovereign people of our nation, to investigate the outrageous corruption and criminality inside his disgraceful Regime. He refused requests from the Senate and House to have Karl Rove, thought to be the mastermind behind the politicization of the Department of Justice, testify publicly and under oath about his role in the firing of 8 U.S. Attorneys for political reasons. This morning at least 2 congressional committees voted to issue subpoenas-- Linda Sanchez's Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative and John Conyer's House Judiciary Committee.

It is likely that the Senate Judiciary Committee will follow suit. Majority Leader Harry Reid issued a statement about why Rove should be compelled to tell the truth. And the "fact and fiction" outline his office has released to the America public is startling; it's something every American should read and absorb-- and remember before going to the polls again.

FICTION ON "PERFORMANCE"

FICTION: The Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General both claimed that the eight United States Attorneys were dismissed for "performance" related reasons.

Attorney General Gonzales made that claim under oath. "What we do is we make an evaluation about the performance of individuals, and I have a responsibility to the people in your district that we have the best possible people in these positions. And that's the reason why changes sometimes have to be made, although there are a number of reasons why changes get made and why people leave on their own." (Testimony of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to the Senate Judiciary Committee, 1/18/07)

Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty repeated that claim under oath. "As the attorney general said at his oversight hearing last month, the phone calls that were made back in December were performance related." (Testimony of Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty to the Senate Judiciary Committee, 2/6/07)

FACT: Justice Department performance evaluations of these U.S. Attorneys were overwhelmingly positive.

FACT: Attorneys fired not for bad performance but for political differences. "All but one of the U.S. attorneys recently fired by the Justice Department had positive job reviews before they were dismissed, but many ran into political trouble with Washington over issues ranging from immigration to the death penalty, according to prosecutors, congressional aides and others familiar with the cases." [Washington Post, 2/18/07]

FACT: Daniel Bodgen, U.S. Attorney for Nevada, received a "very positive" evaluation. "For instance, Daniel Bogden, the U.S. attorney in Nevada, was described in his last job performance evaluation in 2003 as being a 'capable' leader who was highly regarded by the federal judiciary and investigators. 'He didn't get any dings,' said a Justice Department official with knowledge of the review. 'The overall evaluation was very positive.' Bogden was told to step down in December." (McClatchy, 2/12/07)

FACT: Deputy Attorney General McNulty admitted to never having seen Bogden's performance records. "I'm still a little skittish about Bogden ... I'll admit have not looked at his district's performance. Sorry to be raising this again/now; it was just on my mind last night and evening." Email from Deputy AG Paul McNulty to Kyle Sampson, Chief of Staff to AG Gonzales, 12/5/06)

FACT: John McKay, U.S. Attorney for Seattle, was "effective, well- regarded, and [a] capable leader." "McKay, who stepped down recently, said in an interview that his positive review in May 2006 didn't explain his ouster, nor did the phone call he received in December from a Justice Department official who ordered him to resign. The 65-page evaluation described McKay's relationship with most of the federal judges in his area as 'excellent' and praised the quality of his office's work. McKay 'is an effective, well- regarded and capable leader,' the evaluation stated. 'I understand that the recent evaluation of your office went well,' director Michael Battle told McKay in a letter dated April 7, 2006." (McClatchy, 2/12/07)

FACT: Carol Lam, U.S. Attorney for San Diego, was "well-respected." "Lam, another U.S. attorney who was told to resign, was described in her 2005 evaluation as 'well respected' by law enforcement officials, judges and her staff. Overall, the review was positive, according to another Justice Department official who has seen the evaluation. 'We're not aware of any significant issues,' said the official, who also asked not to be identified. Lam is leaving office Feb 15." (McClatchy, 2/12/07)

FACT: Even the Justice Department now admits performance wasn't the issue. "Since the mass firings were carried out three months ago, Justice Department officials have consistently portrayed them as personnel decisions based on the prosecutors' 'performance-related' problems. But, yesterday, officials acknowledged that the ousters were based primarily on the administration's unhappiness with the prosecutors' policy decisions and revealed the White House's role in the matter." (WashingtonPost, 3/3/07)

FICTION: Karl Rove claimed that Carol Lam, U.S. Attorney for San Diego, was dismissed because she did not focus on immigration cases. "Another United States attorney was doing an otherwise excellent job in the San Diego district. [She] refused to file immigration cases ... at the direction of the Attorney General, she was asked to file, and she said I don't want to make that a priority in my office." (Karl Rove Remarks at the Statehouse Convention Center in Littlerock, AK, 3/8/07)

FACT: The Justice Department wrote to Senator Dianne Feinstein three months before the firing, vouching for Lam's handling of immigration cases. "Please know that immigration enforcement is critically important to the Department and to the United States Attorney's Office in the Southern District of California. That office is presently committing fully half of its Assistant United States Attorneys to prosecute criminal immigration cases. The immigration prosecution philosophy of the Southern District focuses on deterrence by directing its resources and efforts against the worst immigration offenders and by bringing felony cases against such defendant that will result in longer sentences." (Letter from William E. Moschella, Asst. Attorney General, to the Honorable Senator Dianne Feinstein, 8/23/06)

FACT: Kyle Sampson, former Chief of Staff to Attorney General Gonzales, looked to immigration as an excuse to fire Carol Lam. "Has ODAG ever called Carol Lam and woodshedded her re: immigration enforcement? Has anyone? If the AG ordered 20 more prosecutors to the S.D. Cal. To do immigration enforcement only where would we get them from (remember the premise: AG has ordered it)? Please advise?" (Email from Kyle Sampson, Chief of Staff to AG Gonzales, to Bill Mercer, Office of the Deputy Attorney General, 5/31/06)

FACT: Disgraced former Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham signed a letter expressing frustration with Carol Lam four months after she began prosecuting him - and one month before he pled guilty. "Again, we would like to meet to discuss the disparity between crimes committed and prosecutions conducted at your earliest convenience ... Sincerely ... Randy 'Duke' Cunningham." (Letter to Attorney General Gonzales, 10/20/05)

FICTION: The Bush Administration told Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) that Daniel Bogden was fired because he did not prosecute enough "adult obscenity" cases. "One is that I was trying to get the specifics of why he was let go. And to be honest with you, this is what I was told. I was told that there were two areas that they didn't feel that Dan was being aggressive enough. One was on obscenity cases -- adult obscenity cases." Press Conference by Senator John Ensign (R-NV.), 3/13/07)

FACT: Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General William Moschella said that Daniel Bogden actually had no significant deficiencies. "The general sense in the department about Mr. Bogden is that given the importance of the district in Las Vegas, there was no particular deficiency. There was an interest in seeing new energy and renewed vigor in that office, really taking it to the next level." Testimony of William Moschella, Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General, to the House Judiciary Committee, 3/6/07)

FACT: Daniel Bogden moved forward on adult obscenity cases - even when the Justice Department gave him little to work with. "A former senior law enforcement official knowledgeable about the work of the Nevada U.S. attorney's office said he was shocked to see the criticism of Bogden ... The case in question, involving adult obscenity on the Internet, was 'woefully deficient' of details according to the official, who confirmed that Ward had gone to Nevada in early September 2006 to present it. 'All they had was a Web site,' he said. 'They didn't have a target fully identified, they had no assets -- they didn't even know where the guy was managing his server.' Nevertheless ... Bogden's office agreed to put together a proposal for pursuing the case, outlining the additional work and resources needed to build it, the official said. The implication that Bogden was refusing to take on a 'good case' in that instance, the official said, 'is totally absurd.'" (Salon.com, 3/19/07)

FACT: Senator Ensign may have been "intentionally mislead." "I said it before: I was either intentionally misled or somebody was misinformed and unaware of the complete process." (Press Conference by Senator John Ensign (R-NV.), 3/13/07)

FICTION: White House Advisor Dan Bartlett claimed that David Iglesias was fired because of complaints on his handling of voter-fraud cases. "That is not limited to U.S. attorneys. And over the course of several years we have received complaints about U.S. attorneys, particularly when it comes to election fraud cases -- not just New Mexico, but also Wisconsin and Pennsylvania ... "(Press Conference with White House Counselor Dan Bartlett, 3/13/07)

FACT: David Iglesias was asked by the Department of Justice to lead a voter fraud seminar for more than 100 prosecutors across the country. "David C. Iglesias, who was dismissed as U.S. attorney for New Mexico in December, was one of two chief federal prosecutors invited to teach at a 'voting integrity symposium' in October 2005. The symposium was sponsored by Justice's public integrity and civil rights sections and was attended by more than 100 prosecutors from around the country, according to an account by Iglesias that a department spokesman confirmed." (WashingtonPost, 3/19/07)

FACT: Republican lawmakers pressured U.S.Attorneys to bring indictments against Democrats - and then fired them when they refused.

In New Mexico: "Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson of New Mexico pressured the U.S. attorney in their state to speed up indictments in a federal corruption investigation that involved at least one former Democratic state senator, according to two people familiar with the contacts. The alleged involvement of the two Republican lawmakers raises questions about possible violations of House of Representatives and Senate ethics rules and could taint the criminal investigation into the award of an $82 million courthouse contract." (McClatchy, 3/1/07)

And in Seattle: "Another fired prosecutor, John McKay, of Seattle, tells NEWSWEEK that local Republicans pressured him to launch a criminal probe of voting fraud that would tilt a deadlocked Washington governor's race. 'They wanted me to go out and start arresting people,' he says, adding that he refused to do so because there was 'no evidence.' After McKay was fired in December, he says he also got a phone call from a 'clearly nervous' Elston asking if he intended to go public: 'He was offering me a deal: you stay silent and the attorney general won't say anything bad about you.'" (Newsweek, 3/19/07)

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FICTION ON "POLITICAL REASONS"

FICTION: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claimed that no United States Attorney would be replaced for political reasons - or to stop a growing corruption probe. "I would never, ever make a change in a United States attorney for political reasons or if it would in any way jeopardize an ongoing serious investigation. I just would not do it." (Testimony of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to the Senate Judiciary Committee, 1/18/07)

FACT: The Justice Department graded prosecutors on whether they were "loyal bushies". "As an operational matter, we would like to replace 15-20 percent of the current US Attorneys ... The vast majority of US Attorneys, 80-85 percent, I would guess, are doing a great job, are loyal bushies, etc." (Email from Kyl Sampson, Dept. of Justice, to Deputy White House Counsel David Leitch, as reported by ABC News, 3/15/07)

FACT: Rove was asked to fire one of the U.S. Attorneys by the New Mexico Republican Party Chairman. "Presidential advisor Karl Rove and at least one other member of the White House political team were urged by the New Mexico Republican party chairman to fire the state's U.S. attorney because of dissatisfaction in part with his failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation in the battleground election state. 'Is anything ever going to happen to that guy?' Weh said he asked Rove at a White House holiday event that month. 'He's gone,' Rove said, according to Weh. 'I probably said something close to Hallelujah,' said Weh." (McClatchy, 3/10/07)

FACT: Carol Lam served a search warrant on Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, fmr. Executive Director of the CIA, and then became targeted for firing. "The U.S. attorney in San Diego notified the Justice Department of search warrants in a Republican bribery scandal last May 10, one day before the attorney general's chief of staff warned the White House of a 'real problem' with her, a Democratic senator said yesterday. The prosecutor, Carol S. Lam, was dismissed seven months later as part of an effort by the Justice Department and the White House to fire eight U.S. attorneys." (WashingtonPost, 3/19/07)

FACT: Kyle Sampson, Chief of Staff to Attorney General Gonzales, wanted a nominee to replace Lam immediately upon the expiration of her term. "Sensitivity: Confidential ... Please call me at your convenience to discuss the following: ... The real problem we have right now with Carol Lam that leads me to conclude that we should have someone ready to be nominated on 11/18, the day her 4-year term expires." (Email from Kyle Sampson, Chief of Staff to AG Gonzales, to William Kelley, 5/11/06)

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FICTION ON PATRIOT ACT PROCEDURES

FICTION: Attorney General Gonzales claimed the White House had no intention of subverting the Senate's constitutional "advice and consent" role. "Third, I believe fundamentally in the constitutional role of the Senate in advice and consent with respect to U.S. attorneys, and would in no way support an effort to circumvent that constitutional role." (Press Conference by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, 3/13/07)

FACT: Kyle Sampson, Attorney General Gonzales's Chief of Staff, and Chris Oprison, of the Office of White House Counsel, openly talked about using their new authority to go around the Senate on the nomination of J. Timothy Griffin in Arkansas.

"(2) 'interim may be a source of confusion or, worse, a term that Pryor's and Lincoln's office can springboard from to press for their own nominee rather than rallying behind Tim. What are your thoughts? If this is a Section 546 AG appointment for unlimited duration, Tim can call himself 'US Attorney' rather than 'interim' or 'acting' and our talkers should avoid referring to him as 'interim.'" (Email from Chris Oprison, Office of White House Counsel, to Kyle Sampson, Chief of Staff to AG Gonzales, 12/19/06)

"I think we should gum this to death ... There is some risk that we'll lose the authority, but if we don't ever exercise it then what's the point of having it?" (Email from Kyle Sampson, Chief of Staff to AG Gonzales, to Chris Oprison, Office of White House Counsel, 12/19/06)

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FICTION ON ATTORNEY GENERAL'S KNOWLEDGE

FICTION: The Attorney General was unaware of the plan to fire U.S. Attorneys for political reasons. "As we can all imagine, in an organization of 110,000 people, I am not aware of every bit of information that passes through the halls of the Department of Justice, nor am I aware of all decisions. As a general matter, some two years ago, I was made aware that there was a request from the White House as to the possibility of replacing all the United States attorneys. That was immediately rejected by me. I felt that that was a bad idea and it was disruptive." (Press Conference by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, 3/13/07)

Karl Rove and then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales decided that the U.S. Attorneys should go. "David - Karl Rove stopped by to ask you (roughly quoting) 'how we planned to proceed regarding US Attorneys, whether we were going to allow all to stay, request resignations from all and accept only some of them, or selectively replace them, etc.' I told him that you would be on the hill all day for the Judge's hearings, and he said the matter was not urgent." (Email from Colin Newman, Office of White House Counsel, to David Leitch, Office of White House Counsel, as reported by ABC News, 3/15/07)

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FICTION ON KARL ROVE'S INVOLVEMENT

FICTION: The White House claimed it had no involvement in the firing of these eight United States Attorneys. "'The White House did not play a role in the list of the seven U.S. attorneys,' said Dan Bartlett, Mr. Bush's counselor, referring to a roster of those who were fired." New York Times, 3/13/07)

FACT: Emails show the White House came up with the plan to dismiss the U.S. Attorneys. "The White House suggested two years ago that the Justice Department fire all 93 U.S. attorneys, a proposal that eventually resulted in the dismissals of eight prosecutors last year, according to e-mails and internal documents that the administration will provide to Congress today." (WashingtonPost, 3/13/07)

FACT: The idea to fire US Attorneys started in Karl Rove's office. "New unreleased e-mails from top administration officials show that the idea of firing all 93 U.S. attorneys was raised by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove in early January 2005, indicating Rove was more involved in the plan than the White House previously acknowledged. The e-mails also show how Alberto Gonzales discussed the idea of firing the attorneys en masse while he was still White House counsel -- weeks before he was confirmed as attorney general. The e-mails put Rove at the epicenter of the imbroglio and raise questions about Gonzales' explanations of the matter." (ABC News, 3/15/07)

FACT: Karl Rove served as a conduit to for political complaints about the U.S.Attorneys. "The White House acknowledged on Sunday that presidential adviser Karl Rove served as a conduit for complaints to the Justice Department about federal prosecutors who were later fired for what critics charge were partisan political reasons." (McClatchy, 3/11/07)

FACT: A capable United States Attorney was replaced with a former aide to Rove. "The Justice Department removed a prosecutor in Arkansas without cause to make room for a former aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove, a senior Justice official conceded in testimony Tuesday ... former U.S. attorney Ed Cummins of Little Rock, has said that he was asked to leave last year to give the job to [J. Timothy] Griffin, who previously worked for Rove and for the Republican National Committee." (The News-Observer, 2/7/07)

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FICTION ON HARRIET MIERS'S INVOLVEMENT

FICTION: White House Senior Advisor Dan Bartlett claimed that the idea to fire U.S. Attorneys originated in the office of former White House Counsel Harriet Miers. "And what Harriet floated was the idea of saying should we treat the fifth year as the first year -- give new blood -- an opportunity for new blood to come in. Kyle, to his credit, and others said, that would be highly disruptive to the process, there are a lot of good U.S. attorneys that are performing; some of them have not served full four-year terms because we hadn't removed them all in the first place. So it was appropriate for Harriet to raise the idea; it was quickly rejected." (Press Conference with White House Counselor Dan Bartlett, 3/13/07)

FACT: Kyle Sampson discussed the dismissals with Alberto Gonzales in 2004 - when Gonzales was still the White House Counsel. "Judge and I discussed briefly a couple of weeks ago ... As an operational matter, we would like to replace 15-20 percent of the current US Attorneys - the underperforming ones." (Email from Kyle Sampson, Chief of Staff to AG Gonzales, to David Leitch, Deputy White House Counsel, 1/9/05)

FACT: White House emails show idea was discussed by Karl Rove and then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, neither dismissed it outright. "David - Karl Rove stopped by to ask you (roughly quoting) 'how we planned to proceed regarding US Attorneys, whether we were going to allow all to stay, request resignations from all and accept only some of them, or selectively replace them, etc.' I told him that you would be on the hill all day for the Judge's hearing, and he said the matter was not urgent." (Email from Colin Newman, Office of White House Counsel, to David Leitch, Deputy White House Counsel, 1/9/05)

And as my pal Bob Geiger reports this morning, the Regime-- led by Rove-- has been shows to be guilty of "political profiling." There has been an unprecedented-- unless you want to include Nazi Germany-- and "non-proportionate political profiling of elected Democratic officials" by U.S. Attorneys. Egged on my Rove's little shoppe of horrors inside the White House, the Bush "Justice" Department has been pushed to start noisy-- and usually baseless-- investigations against Democrats, from local politicians to high profile leaders like Hillary Clinton, Jennifer Granholm, Chuck Schumer, Robert Menendez and Amy Klobuchar-- all trumped up dead ends. At the same time, the Regime has done all they could to hold back investigations into real criminal behavior by Republicans like Randy Duke Cunningham, Tom DeLay, Jerry Lewis, John Doolittle, Bob Ney, Virgil Goode, Gary Miller, Ken Calvert, John Doolittle, etc.


UPDATE: BUSH REMINDING YOU OF ANYONE THESE DAYS?

Nixon? Yep, bet your life!

Bush's performance Tuesday night trying to wiggle out of the escalating controversy over the politically-motivated firings of eight U.S. attorneys is just another example of Nixon reborn and a corrupt President trapped by his own lies and malfeasance.

By refusing to let political guru Karl Rove and former White House counsel Harriet Miers testify under oath before Congress, Bush is forcing a showdown that will cripple his already-weakened Presidency.

Yet Bush, like Nixon, remains arrogant until the end, determined to ignore the law, political necessity or common sense. Given the lies on top of lies that the White House has told Congress over the past six years, there is no way either the House or Senate will accept unsworn, off-the-record testimony from either Rove or Miers.

The Democratic leadership of Congress, and a growing number of Republicans, want both on the record and under oath where they can face perjury charges for the lies they will inevitably tell.

An increasingly bi-partisan anger towards the way the Bush Administration conducts its business surfaced like a tidal wave Tuesday when the Senate voted 94-2 to revoke Bush's authority to replace U.S. attorneys.

Before Bob Barr became a right-wing congressman from Georgia he was one of Ronald Reagan's U.S. Attorneys. He feels that Congress have a right to demand the information they're asking for regarding Rove. Think Progress has the CNN video.

You have political operatives both at the White House and at the Department of Justice drawing up lists of U.S. Attorneys and ranking them according to some criteria, and this is apparently being done by a person at the Department of Justice that himself had no experience. I mean, for heaven’s sake, taking a renowned prosecutor like Peter [sic] Fitzgerald and this person Sampson at the Department of Justice, ranking him basically as unqualified, you know, that says more about the people making the list than it does certainly about the people who were the subject of the list. I mean, these are very well thought out, very highly respected prosecutors-- otherwise they would not have been appointed to these positions by Mr. Bush himself.

JERRY LEWIS AND JOHN DOOLITTLE-- THE SHAME OF ALL CALIFORNIANS

Yesterday drunken, vomit-soaked walking embarrassment to Democracy, Congresswoman Mean Jean Schmidt joined fellow corporate whores John McHugh (NY), Phil Gingrey (GA), C.W. Bill Young (FL) and Steve Buyer (IN) in claiming the disgraceful and shameful scandal of Walter Reed was nothing but hype. What these five little pieces of crap all have in common is that they are all Republican hacks. Their warmongering party shouts "support the troops" when they mean "support Bush's disastrous wars and the hell with the actual men and women who are the troops. They don't care about the wounded vets who come back from the battlefield. They sent them there ill-equipped and they don't care if they live or they die.


A few days ago the House Appropriations Committee voted in favor of a bill to make sure our troops were properly trained and adequately equipped before being sent to Iraq. Every single Republican on the committee voted against the bill. Every one of them. Two of the worst and most corrupt members of that committee, each grown personally wealthy from taking bribes from defense contractors and lobbyists, are from my own state of California, one from the northern part of the state, John Doolittle and one from the southern part of the state, Jerry Lewis. These are two of the most venal and monstrous characters to have ever been elected to public office in America.

Yesterday my friend Kagro X mentioned the infamy of the Republican members of this committee at Daily Kos and he offered a video which helped defeat ex-Republican Senator George Allen of Virginia. I want to ask you to take a moment and look at the video, which was made last year by VoteVets.org.



Now please look at the Iraq War voting records of John Doolittle and Jerry Lewis. Perfect scores-- perfect zeros. They each voted for war, war and more war on every single vote. Now look at their voting records concerning the well-being of our country's military personnel: Doolittle-- on the 15 votes regarding the well-being of our fighting men and women, the only time Doolittle didn't vote against them was on October 30, 2003 when he was absent-- and Jerry Lewis-- 3 absences but an otherwise perfect record of undermining the well-being of our fighting men and women. Hard to believe? These two who never tire of chanting "Support our troops?" They say what they need to say to be elected and then do what they need to do to serve the interests of their Big Money masters. Last year Lt. Col. Charlie Brown started something we need to help him finish. He sees this the same way I do. "Time and again, John Doolittle votes to send young people into combat while denying them the tools they need to succeed in their mission and the quality aftercare they’ve been promised. Leaving those who defend America exposed to preventable death, and our military unprepared to deal with future security threats is beyond irresponsible-- it’s completely indefensible."


There are no elected members of either house of Congress as dangerous to our country's safety and security as John Doolittle and Jerry Lewis. These are the shame of the great state of California. In November a real patriotic America and military vet, Charlie Brown, whose son is on active duty in Iraq, nearly defeated Doolittle and held him to below 50%. Next year Brown has promised to work even harder and retire Doolittle from public life. Our Blue America PAC was proud that the very first candidate we endorsed for 2008 was Charlie Brown and I want to humbly ask you to donate directly to his campaign today-- whether $5 or $500 or anything in between-- here through Blue America. 10% of all contributions this month will go to assist his district's outreach programs that help homeless veterans and other vets down on their luck.

Last year Lewis was the head of the Appropriations Committee and one of the biggest kingpins in the Republican Culture of Corruption put together by Tom DeLay and Roy Blunt. He deftly arranged to have no real opponent in 2006. This year the DCCC has a real fighter in Chris Van Hollen and Van Hollen has told me that the days of human waste like Jerry Lewis taking re-election for granted are gone. As Howard Dean recommended, Democrats will stand and fight all over America now, bringing truth and light where in the past there was only lies and darkness. There is no official candidate who has declared against Jerry Lewis yet although several are readying their campaigns. I guarantee you that a donation to the Blue America PAC is a donation towards the political demise of Jerry Lewis.

DOES ANYONE KNOW WHY DAVID IGLESIAS WAS FIRED? BUSH WON'T ALLOW ROVE TO TESIFY UNDER OATH. SO LET'S HEAR WHAT IGLESIAS SAYS

David Iglesias is a straight arrow attorney, the United States Naval Reserve commander whose character was portrayed by Tom Cruise in the film A Few Good Men. Until recently he was one of the GOP's best and brightest hopes for making political headway in the fast-growing Mexican-American community in the southwest. Bush appointed him to be U.S. Attorney for New Mexico in 2001. His official performance review was exemplary. And then he was fired-- and smeared. What went wrong?

Today's New York Times has an OpEd that may help us understand what happened. It's entitled Why I Was Fired and it was written by David Iglesias.

WITH this week’s release of more than 3,000 Justice Department e-mail messages about the dismissal of eight federal prosecutors, it seems clear that politics played a role in the ousters.

Of course, as one of the eight, I’ve felt this way for some time. But now that the record is out there in black and white for the rest of the country to see, the argument that we were fired for "performance related" reasons (in the words of Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty) is starting to look more than a little wobbly.

United States attorneys have a long history of being insulated from politics. Although we receive our appointments through the political process (I am a Republican who was recommended by Senator Pete Domenici), we are expected to be apolitical once we are in office. I will never forget John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, telling me during the summer of 2001 that politics should play no role during my tenure. I took that message to heart. Little did I know that I could be fired for not being political.

Politics entered my life with two phone calls that I received last fall, just before the November election. One came from Representative Heather Wilson and the other from Senator Domenici, both Republicans from my state, New Mexico.

Ms. Wilson asked me about sealed indictments pertaining to a politically charged corruption case widely reported in the news media involving local Democrats. Her question instantly put me on guard. Prosecutors may not legally talk about indictments, so I was evasive. Shortly after speaking to Ms. Wilson, I received a call from Senator Domenici at my home. The senator wanted to know whether I was going to file corruption charges-- the cases Ms. Wilson had been asking about-- before November. When I told him that I didn’t think so, he said, "I am very sorry to hear that," and the line went dead.

A few weeks after those phone calls, my name was added to a list of United States attorneys who would be asked to resign-- even though I had excellent office evaluations, the biggest political corruption prosecutions in New Mexico history, a record number of overall prosecutions and a 95 percent conviction rate. (In one of the documents released this week, I was deemed a "diverse up and comer" in 2004. Two years later I was asked to resign with no reasons given.)

When some of my fired colleagues-- Daniel Bogden of Las Vegas; Paul Charlton of Phoenix; H. E. Cummins III of Little Rock, Ark.; Carol Lam of San Diego; and John McKay of Seattle-- and I testified before Congress on March 6, a disturbing pattern began to emerge. Not only had we not been insulated from politics, we had apparently been singled out for political reasons. (Among the Justice Department’s released documents is one describing the office of Senator Domenici as being "happy as a clam" that I was fired.)

As this story has unfolded these last few weeks, much has been made of my decision to not prosecute alleged voter fraud in New Mexico. Without the benefit of reviewing evidence gleaned from F.B.I. investigative reports, party officials in my state have said that I should have begun a prosecution. What the critics, who don’t have any experience as prosecutors, have asserted is reprehensible-- namely that I should have proceeded without having proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The public has a right to believe that prosecution decisions are made on legal, not political, grounds.

What’s more, their narrative has largely ignored that I was one of just two United States attorneys in the country to create a voter-fraud task force in 2004. Mine was bipartisan, and it included state and local law enforcement and election officials.

After reviewing more than 100 complaints of voter fraud, I felt there was one possible case that should be prosecuted federally. I worked with the F.B.I. and the Justice Department’s public integrity section. As much as I wanted to prosecute the case, I could not overcome evidentiary problems. The Justice Department and the F.B.I. did not disagree with my decision in the end not to prosecute.

Good has already come from this scandal. Yesterday, the Senate voted to overturn a 2006 provision in the Patriot Act that allows the attorney general to appoint indefinite interim United States attorneys. The attorney general’s chief of staff has resigned and been replaced by a respected career federal prosecutor, Chuck Rosenberg. The president and attorney general have admitted that "mistakes were made," and Mr. Domenici and Ms. Wilson have publicly acknowledged calling me.

President Bush addressed this scandal yesterday. I appreciate his gratitude for my service — this marks the first time I have been thanked. But only a written retraction by the Justice Department setting the record straight regarding my performance would settle the issue for me.

OK, now I understand... completely. Darkness hates Light; that easy.


UPDATE: AND IT LOOKS LIKE I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO UNDERSTANDS

Things may be more genteel in the Senate and Sneaky Pete may be allowed to retire graciously instead of being held up to the public for the bucket of stinking raw sewage he's long been. But in the House, Chris Van Hollen of the DCCC is wasting no time to drive home the point to Heather Wilson's constituents what they have representing them in Congress. Go listen to the ad. It's great having someone in charge of the DCCC who knows how to fight corrupt and reactionary Republicans.