When it comes to a big-time whitewash, even Tom Sawyer couldn't have done a better job than our one and only attorney general, Judge Malarkey

"Professionalism is alive and well at the Justice Department."

-- said today by U.S. Attorney General Judge Malarkey

to delegates at the annual meeting of the American Bar Association

"Although I don't foresee any prosecutions, we will of course cooperate with all legitimate inquiries into the extent and causes of, and the remedies for, any breakdowns in the lawful and effective functioning of the Department of Justice. This includes coordinating efforts to ensure that all present and former officials, not just of the DoJ but of the entire executive branch, with pertinent information are made available to testify."

-- not said today by U.S. Attorney General Judge Malarkey

to delegates at the annual meeting of the American Bar Association

by Ken

So, "professionalism is alive and well at the Justice Department"? What a relief! Oh, happy day! So it's all OK now, right?

Oh gawd, oh gawd, oh gawd. Of course it's not all OK. Not at all.

It's so entirely not-all-right that I should once again be jumping up and down and screaming at the outrage of it. My guess is that if you've found your way to DownWithTyranny, you've done your share of such jumping up and down and screaming at the outrage. So you know both how all that jumping and screaming feels and how exhausting it becomes when the outrages not only don't go away but keep piling up.

Earlier today Howie passed along this report by the AP's Mark Sherman on the attorney general's appearance this morning at the ABA annual meeting. It appears that our Judge Malarkey announced more or less officially that all the wrongdoing alleged or hinted at in those recent IG reports regarding illegal politicization in the hiring of career (as opposed to political) appointees is now formally whitewashed.

"There was a failure of supervision by senior officials in the department," said Judge Malarkey, according to the AP's Sherman. "And there was a failure on the part of some employees to cry foul when they were aware, or should have been aware, of problems."

This appears to be what Sherman was referring to when he wrote:

Mukasey used his sharpest words yet to criticize the senior leaders who took part in or failed to stop illegal hiring practices during the tenure of his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales [right].

But, he told delegates to the American Bar Association annual meeting, "not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime. In this instance, the two joint reports found only violations of the civil service laws."

Whoa there! Easy now, dude, don't go ballistic on us!

Asked for comment, former Attorney General Idiot Al "The Torture Guy" Gonzales, on whose watch the worst of the Justice Department atrocities occurred, said, "Man, that Judge Malarkey knows how to bum a guy out. I feel bad, real bad."

OK, I made this up. I have no evidence whatsoever that Idiot Al feels bad at all, although I wouldn't be surprised to learn that he's annoyed and a trifle embarrassed by yet more discussion of the systematic law-breaking carried out by a host of department officials under his supervision. But it's hard to disagree with Howie's thumbnail characterization of Judge Malarkey's crackdown:

Fox guarding henhouse: "Hold still while I shout stern words at you without actually punishing you!"

Knowing that I'm on record as judging the political perversion of the Justice Department as, next to the catastrophe in the Middle East, the most damaging depredation of the Bush regime, Howie asked if I wanted to write about this. And I should certainly want to. And yet, and yet . . .

It's just so exhausting, and feels so futile, that . . . that . . . well, I don't even want to think about it. Which of course is exactly what Judge Malarkey is counting on to successfully sweep this whole ghastly democracy-demolishing mess under the spacious DoJ rug.

For the record, the judge's remarks appear not to extend to other aspects of the DoJ breakdown still under investigation. According to Sherman:

Other intrusions of Bush administration politics into department hirings and firings remain under investigation. Justice officials say the attorney general's remarks do not preclude criminal prosecutions if wrongdoing is found in the inquiries into the firing of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006 and the hiring practices in the department's civil rights division.

Of course there is still no indication that anyone in the Bush regime plans to do anything except obstruct those still-ongoing but faltering investigations into DoJ misconduct. I'm certainly not holding my breath that Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten and especially Karl Rove will be under oath spilling their guts anytime soon.

In the end it occurred to me that maybe I should just write the plain truth: that I'm exhausted, and rendered beyond combat by this latest evidence of how much good all the previous jumping up and down and screaming did -- including all the jumping up and down and screaming done by much more eloquent and persistent jumpers-and-screamers than yours truly.

The moral of the story appears to be:

If you happen to run a rampantly corrupt governement, or a rampantly corrupt agency of a rampantly corrupt government (in particular an agency responsible for the administration of justice), and in a moment of faint-heartedness you think you've accumulated more dirt than you can possibly sweep under the rug, don't forget that you can always buy more rugs.

And that demon discount shopper South Carolina Sen. Lindsey "The Rug Merchant" Graham [above] can probably get you a deal on them.

#

In the puzzling wake of Judge Malarkey's secret late-night Senate confirmation, inquiring minds are asking, what became of "the 60-vote requirement"?

Judge Malarkey and, uh, some other guy (it doesn't matter
who, because our Mike is gonna be such an independent AG)

As we have been told so often, it's now standard operating procedure in the Senate, at least if you're the Democrats: Ya wanna do sumpin, ya gotta has 60 votes, on accounta they'll just wheel in Philly Buster, the knuckle-draggin' Senate terminator.

However, they didn't have to roust Philly from his sleep last night for the unexpected, unscheduled confirmation of Judge "Big Mike" Malarkey as U.S. attorney general. As a matter of fact, the last I heard, nobody seems to know even now how the confirmation vote came to happen last night, seemingly sneaked onto the Senate docket. One hears dark whisperings of a "deal"--presumably yet another in the series of Amazing Deals (do I hear "TV reality show" up ahead?) that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has reportedly engineered with his GOP opposite numbers, giving away pretty much anything that's asked for in exchange for . . . um . . . er . . . well, let's put it this way: If the Dems came away with as much as a handful of beans, they did better than I'm imagining. (I'm sure they were told the beans were magic.)

Meanwhile, many people with lingering reservations about the much-respected Judge Malarkey--even in spite of his sincere vows to be independent in saying and doing everything the White House instructs him to--point to the 53-40 vote, with all those missing Democratic presidential candidates supposedly committed to voting "no," and wonder how this fits with the new reality of the need for 60 votes to pass anything in the Senate. Notably Glenn Greenwald over at Salon.com, in pondering "What happened to the Senate's '60-vote requirement'?," notes:

Thus, at least 44 Senators claimed to oppose Mukasey's confirmation -- more than enough to prevent it via filibuster. So why didn't they filibuster, the way Senate Republicans have on virtually every measure this year which they wanted to defeat?

Numerous Senate Democrats delivered dramatic speeches from the floor as to why Mukasey's confirmation would be so devastating to the country. The Washington Post said the "vote came after more than four hours of impassioned floor debate." . . .

So why would 44 Democratic Senators make a flamboyant showing of opposing confirmation without actually doing what they could to prevent it? Is it that a filibuster was not possible because a large number of these Democratic Senators were willing to symbolically oppose confirmation so they could say they did -- by casting meaningless votes in opposition knowing that confirmation was guaranteed -- but were unwilling to demonstrate the sincerity of their claimed beliefs by acting on them?

Along the way Glenn digresses most welcomely into an astonished aside on how torture has become just another issue that people can take sides on:

[The most amazing quote was from chief Mukasey supporter Chuck Schumer, who, before voting for him, said that Mukasey is "wrong on torture -- dead wrong." Marvel at that phrase: "wrong on torture." Six years ago, there wasn't even any such thing as being "wrong on torture," because "torture" wasn't something we debated. It would have been incoherent to have heard: "Well, he's dead wrong on torture, but . . . "

Now, "torture" is not only something we openly debate, but it's something we do. And the fact that someone is on the wrong side of the "torture debate" doesn't prevent them from becoming the Attorney General of the United States. It's just one issue, like any other issue -- the capital gains tax, employer mandates for health care, the water bill -- and just because someone is "dead wrong" on one little issue (torture) hardly disqualifies them from High Beltway Office.]

Eventually Glenn comes to rest, as you knew he had to, on the notion that there really isn't a 60-vote requirement, except when there is:

it isn't true that there is a "60-vote requirement," because only Republicans are willing to impose it. Democrats won't, even on what they claim are the gravest of matters, such as confirming someone as Attorney General who is "dead wrong on torture" and who won't even "tell the president that he cannot ignore the laws passed by Congress."

The so-called "60-vote requirement" applies only when it is time to do something to limit the Bush administration. It is merely the excuse Senate Democrats use to explain away their chronic failure/unwillingness to limit the President, and it is what the media uses to depict the GOP filibuster as something normal and benign. There obviously is no "60-vote requirement" when it comes to having the Senate comply with the President's demands, as the 53-vote confirmation of Michael Mukasey amply demonstrates. But as Mukasey is sworn in as the highest law enforcement officer in America, the Democrats want you to know that they most certainly did stand firm and "registered their displeasure."

I really can't think of anything more to say. But if you check out Glenn's full post on Salon.com, you'll find that plenty of other people could. The last I looked, there were 263 comments.


UPDATE: ABOUT THE REID DEAL ON JUDGE MALARKEY

On TPM, Greg Sargent is now reporting:

"According to sources inside and outside the Democratic leadership, Harry Reid allowed a vote on Mukasey because in exchange the Republican leadership agreed to allow a vote on the big Defense Appropriations Bill, which contains $459 billion in military spending but doesn't fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Reid had wanted to get this bill passed before the end of this week, and in fact, the defense bill did come up for a vote late last night and was passed after the Mukasey vote. "

Says Sargent, "Dem leaders wanted this defense approps bill passed . . . to be able to argue that they had sent a bill to the President funding the military, if not the war itself. The idea was that doing this would allow them to protect themselves in the days ahead when the battle over Iraq funding heats up and Republicans inevitably charge that Dems are refusing to fund the troops."

On the subject of a Democratic fillibuster to the nomination, according to Sargent, "A leadership source claimed that it was because Dem leaders were convinced that Repubs would be able to break off enough Dems to reach the 60 vote threshold and defeat the filibuster. They would have gotten 60. Some on the Democratic side honestly fundamentally don't believe in filibustering cabinet secretaries. We are on the cusp of a new administration, and we think it will be a Democratic one. Filibustering here would have set a bad precedent."

#