It's Been A Great Week For Lesbians In Washington!

The week may have started out badly for President Obama-- who, in the light of some catastrophic vetting problems, may finally be thinking that he shouldn't have bought into the self-propagated hype about Rahm Emanuel's competence-- but it's been a fabulous week for lesbians. And I'm not even talking about the whispers that Senator Barbara Milkulski (D-MD) is the rumored top choice to replace Tom Daschle as Secretary of Health and Human Services. (We don't comment on rumors at DWT-- and we're still keeping our fingers crossed that Obama will do the right thing, ignore Emanuel's bitter, hate-blinded and wrong-headed advice, and pick Howard Dean for the job. I mean Emanuel should be vetting this kind of stuff, not keeping the nation's most successful bipartisan health care reformer from solving one of the nation's biggest problems.)

More noteworthy is the backroom deal that Obama made with New Hampshire political hacks Governor John Lynch and Senator Judd Gregg that led to the selection of Bonnie Newman as New Hampshire's new U.S. Senator. Like Washington and California, New Hampshire will now have two women senators-- if Gregg gets confirmed as Commerce Secretary-- and let's face it, no matter how corrupt or unqualified or ideologically unfit someone is for an appointment, if they are, or have ever been, a member of the world's most exclusive club, they are in. (Well... if they're a Republican.) Bonnie's in the closet though, like Barbara. This is the 21st century. Why are people in the closet?

At least Alison Nathan, who Obama chose Monday as a White House associate counsel, is completely out of the closet and living like a normal human being. She is a former clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and has been teaching at NYU's and Fordham's law schools. She worked for the Obama campaign as a national voter protection senior adviser and a member of his gay advisory committee.

I'm not sure if former DOJ employee Leslie Hagen is in the closet or not, but I do remember that when neo-Nazi little religious fanatic and partisan shit-for-brains Bushie, Monica Goodling, heard a rumor that Hagen was a lesbian, she fired her, quite illegally. Monday that travesty of justice at Justice got turned around. At least one part of the politicization of the Justice Department was been undone and Hagen is back at her post at the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys.

In 2006, Hagen was the liaison between the main Justice Department and the U.S. Attorneys' committee on Native American affairs. The chairman of that committee, Tom Heffelfinger, described Hagen to NPR last year as "the best qualified person in the nation to fill that job." Hagen's performance evaluations had the highest possible ratings--"outstanding" in each of five categories.

The job came up for renewal every year. After the first year, Hagen was surprised to hear that she would have to move on.

As NPR reported in April, a top aide to the attorney general had heard a rumor that Hagen was a lesbian. Discrimination based on sexual orientation is against Justice Department rules. But Monica Goodling, senior counsel to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, had Hagen removed from her job anyway.

That was more than a year ago. The inspector general eventually confirmed the NPR report and added new details, saying Goodling not only ousted Hagen but also blocked Hagen from getting other Justice Department jobs she was qualified for.

Bush Justice Department Finds That Bush Justice Department Was Enagaged In Illegal Activities

Bush Regime's Monica + mentor

A few weeks ago 11 Southern California congresswomen put on a luncheon fundraiser for some of the Democratic women running for Congress from around the country. The wide ideological diversity in members and candidates couldn't have been better encapsulated by the Sánchez sisters, Loretta, the Blue Dog, and Linda, the brilliant progressive. Both are outgoing, well-spoken, inspiring and charismatic. Loretta the Blue Dog seemed to be in charge and running the show but it was Linda who got the loudest and longest applause and most of the best laugh lines. Loretta the Blue Dog wanted to make it clear how important it was to elect more people with the same anatomical plumbing as hers; Linda wanted to have Karl Rove arrested. Loretta the Blue Dog explained why more women members meant something significant-- although the candidates ranged from kick ass liberals like Darcy Burner (D-WA) and Annette Taddeo (D-FL) to Republican-lite insiders with nothing to offer but embarrassment like Christine Jennings (FL) and Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ). Linda, who was cruelly tasked with introducing Kirkpatrick by her Blue Dog sister, did the best she could with what she had to work with but harkened back to the already introduced far more impressive Ohio candidate, Vic Wulsin, actually referring to Vic's hated opponent as "Mean Jean Schmidt," somewhat belying Loretta the Blue Dog's entire plumbing argument.

Anyway, this morning Linda Sánchez, chair of the Judiciary Committee's Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee was joined by Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers responded to the release of the Justice Department's report, "An Investigation of Allegations of Politicized Hiring by Monica Goodling and Other Staff in the Office of the Attorney General." In short, the investigation proves that the word "allegations" need no longer be used in discussing the case.

"Today's report describes 'systematic' violations of federal law by several former leaders of the Department of Justice," said Conyers. "Apparently, the political screening was so pervasive that even qualified Republican applicants were rejected from Department positions because they were 'not Republican enough' for Monica Goodling and others. The report also makes clear that the cost to our nation of these apparent crimes was severe, as qualified individuals were rejected for key positions in the fight against terrorism and other critical Department jobs for no reason other than political whim. The Report also indicates that Monica Goodling, Kyle Sampson, and Alberto Gonzales may have lied to the Congress about these matters. I have directed my staff to closely review this matter and to consider whether a criminal referral for perjury is needed."

"The House Judiciary Committee's investigation into the politicization of the Department of Justice has been criticized by the Minority as a fishing expedition that has caught no fish," said Sánchez. "This report, which found that Monica Goodling and many other Justice Department officials committed misconduct by violating both federal law and Department policy, adds to a growing public record that this Administration has tainted our system of justice."

The report, released today by the Office of Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility found:

• Senior Bush Administration Department of Justice officials, including Monica Goodling, Kyle Sampson, Jan Williams, and others violated federal law and committed misconduct in basing hiring decisions for career prosecutor positions, details to senior Department offices and immigration judgeships on the applicant's political affiliations and views.

• The report highlighted political cronyism that was "particularly damaging" in a vital counterterrorism post when a qualified expert was rejected because his wife had the wrong political affiliation. Instead a candidate was chosen that "lacked any experience in counterterrorism issues" and who other DoJ officials believed "was not qualified for the position."

• Immigration judgeships were needlessly held vacant for long periods while Department leaders sought to identify politically suitable candidates, leading to a severe backlog of immigration matters.

• Monica Goodling also made false statements to the Department's own lawyers who were defending a lawsuit regarding Immigration Judge hiring.

• A current Department official, John Nowacki, prepared and circulated a press release responding to public concern about these issues that he knew was false at the time; the report recommends that Mr. Nowacki be disciplined.

• Monica Goodling refused to approve several DOJ appointments for an AUSA who Ms. Goodling believed was gay.

The conclusion of the report itself makes it clear why Linda Sánchez is considering perjury charges against Goodling and Nowacki (for starters). No one could possibly look at the report and come away thinking several Bush Regime appointees hadn't broken several laws. In fact, this morning's Washington Post opens their story with the conclusion: "Former Justice Department counselor Monica M. Goodling and former chief of staff D. Kyle Sampson routinely broke the law by conducting political litmus tests on candidates for jobs as immigration judges and line prosecutors, according to an inspector general's report released today. Goodling passed over hundreds of qualified applicants and squashed the promotions of others after deeming candidates insufficiently loyal to the Republican party."

In sum, the evidence showed that Sampson, Williams, and Goodling violated federal law and Department policy, and Sampson and Goodling committed misconduct, by considering political and ideological affiliations in soliciting and selecting IJs, which are career positions protected by the civil service laws.

Not only did this process violate the law and Department policy, it also caused significant delays in appointing IJs. These delays increased the burden on the immigration courts, which already were experiencing an increased workload and a high vacancy rate. EOIR Deputy Director Ohlson repeatedly requested candidate names to address the growing number of vacancies, with little success. As a result of the delay in providing candidates, the Department was unable to timely fill the large numbers of vacant IJ positions.
We also concluded that Goodling committed misconduct when she provided inaccurate information to a Civil Division attorney who was defending a lawsuit brought by an unsuccessful IJ candidate. Goodling told the attorney that she did not take political factors into consideration in connection with IJ hiring, which was not accurate.

In addition, we concluded that Williams provided inaccurate information to us concerning her Internet research activities.

Because Goodling, Sampson, and Williams have resigned from the Department, they are no longer subject to discipline by the Department for their actions described in this report. Nevertheless, we recommend that the Department consider the findings in this report should they apply in the future for another position with the Department.

In addition, we concluded that EOUSA Deputy Director John Nowacki committed misconduct by drafting a proposed Department response to a media inquiry which he knew was inaccurate. Although Nowacki knew that Goodling had used political and ideological affiliations to assess career attorney candidates for EOUSA detail positions, he drafted a media statement in which the Department would have denied the allegations. Nowacki is still employed by the Department. Therefore, we recommend that the Department consider appropriate discipline for him based upon the evidence in this report.

More pardon prospects for George W. Bush in January. He's sure going to be busy making sure there is no accountability for 8 years of systematic and systemic gross, blatant criminality. And Gonzalez? Anyone remember him? [UPDATE: Conyers does. Are perjury charges imminent? Or just more blather and hot air?]

BUSH REGIME MAY HAVE MISSED THE TERRORISTS ON 9/11 BUT THEY FOUND A LESBIAN AT THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT AND FIRED HER

Apparently Goodling doesn't hate gay men, just lesbians

By every single account, Leslie Hagen couldn't have been a better employee. She "received the highest possible ratings for her work as liaison between the Justice Department and the U.S. attorneys' committee on Native American issues. Her final job evaluation lists five categories for supervisors to rank her performance. For each category, a neat X fills the box marked, "Outstanding." And at the bottom of the page, under "overall rating level," she also got the top mark: Outstanding." That isn't enough of a reason to fire someone, even in Bush's topsy-turvy Orwellian world, but Alberto Gonzalez's Republican Party enforcer-- the equivalent of what the Nazis and Soviets had in place to guarantee ideological purity-- Monica Goodling thought she smelled a lesbian and Hagen was let go.

The Justice Department's inspector general is investigating whether a career attorney in the department was dismissed from her job because of rumors that she is a lesbian.

...At the height of the scandal over the fired U.S. attorneys, Goodling admitted to making personnel decisions about career Justice Department lawyers based on improper partisan considerations.

"I crossed the line of the civil service rules," Goodling told Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) at a congressional hearing in May 2007.

Goodling's conversation with Scott focused on whether Republican Party loyalty factored into her hiring decisions. But by all accounts, Hagen was a GOP loyalist.
So, what was Goodling's problem with Hagen?

The Justice Department's inspector general is looking into whether Hagen was dismissed after a rumor reached Goodling that Hagen is a lesbian.

As one Republican source put it, "To some people, that's even worse than being a Democrat."

Hagen was suspected of possibly being a lesbian. "People who know Hagen say she's a private person who does not discuss her personal life." There are still self-loathing gays and lesbians, though not many, who vote for Republicans. I met one the other day. He told me the Democrats will raise his taxes-- he's a corporate executive who makes far more than is reasonable-- and that he's voting for McCain who, he thinks, will lower his taxes further. And when I told him that McCain has a virulently anti-gay voting record and will be indebted to anti-gay bigots like John Hagee if he's elected, this guy says "that kind of stuff only applies to poor gays, not us" and that he doesn't care. At that point I excused myself and found someone else to talk to, our hostess' dog.

Wasn't it big of Monica to admit that she "may have gone too far" with her law-breaking? Of course, she doesn't seem to get that she WAS law-breaking

I know the Devil is in the details, and I know that any reasonable scrutinizer of Monica Goodling's House Judiciary Committee testimony yesterday would surely agree that it was massively incriminating--certainly for its clear confirmation that her old boss the attorney general has been lying up the wazoo, and for her own grudging admission that she "crossed the line" (i.e., broke the law against politicizing appointments at every opportunity she had).

Nevertheless, I have to stand by my impression yesterday based on quick perusal of the Firedoglake live bloggings: no big deal. Because I can't help thinking that to people who don't understand the stakes here, meaning the American public, it will all be dismissed as (a) legal technicalities and (b) "politics? they all do it."

Sigh.

Remember how the concept of the "smoking gun" has been redefined in contemporary American politics. Democrats are guilty of anything and everything, the minute anyone thinks of anything to accuse them of (if not sooner). Republicans, however, and especially far, far right Republicans, aren't guilty of anything until you've got enough evidence to force them into plea-bargaining.

And of course under the Cheney Rule, even if you're caught with an actual smoking gun in your own personal hands, you're not guilty of anything, and in fact it's your victim who owes you an apology.

Thanks to Karl or Monica or Kyle or Idiot Al or whoever, a star of sorts is born. Ladies and gents, we bring you fired U.S. Attorney David Iglesias!

"Want to get to the bottom of this? Get Rove and company in to testify under oath."
--former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, today on washingtonpost.com

This afternoon washingtonpost.com celebrated Monica Goodling Testimony Day by having an online chat with one of her most celebrated victims, former New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias.


DI took advantage of numerous opportunities to express his support for most of his fellow U.S. attorneys and to repeat his view that a number of his fired colleagues shouldn't have been fired, noting in particular that a number of them--himself included--had ongoing investigations interrupted. Here's a question about a U.S. attorney who might have been fired:

Cheyenne, Wyo.: It was reported today that Wyoming's U.S. Attorney, Matt Mead, was on one of the first lists for consideration. This was a surprise to many of us and is hard to figure out. Have you learned what the White House originally sought to gain by carrying out these mass terminations? What political benefit did they think they would accrue by firing many of their own appointees?

IGLESIAS: Cheyenne: Matt Mead is a standup guy, and I enjoyed serving with him. What political gain could be served by firing appointees who were doing a good job? None. It was a terrible miscalculation.

DI, like the rest of us, seems focused on the mysterious provenance of The List. It has to have come from somewhere, and the possibilities aren't exactly endless.

Boston: I believe we have heard the AG and now Monica Goodling state that they did not know how the list of attorneys to be fired was developed, yet they both stated that the White House was not involved. Does this seem like a strange statement? If they do not know about the development of the list, how do they know the White House was not involved?

IGLESIAS: Boston: The list did not appear magically. Someone compiled it, and if DoJ didn't do it, then the White House did.

A number of questioners had watched or were watching Monica's House Judiciary Committee testimony.

Washington: I am half-listening to the hearing today, and get the sense we will be no closer to the bottom of this issue. What do you think it will take to finally answer all the questions pertaining to the DOJ?

IGLESIAS: Washington: Monica has dropped the dime on [recently resigned Deputy Attorney General Paul] McNulty, so that's one thing I've learned. Want to get to the bottom of this? Get Rove and company in to testify under oath. [Later Iglesias referred again to Monica's testimony that McNulty had been "appropriately briefed by Goodling."]

Many participants had questions or comments about Sen. Pete Domenici's and Rep. Heather Wilson's clearly inappropriate inquiries to DI about voter-fraud indictments, which he has previously acknowledged he should have reported immediately. (He pointed out today that his Arizona colleague Paul Charlton did, and it didn't accomplish anything, including saving Charlton's job.) When a questioner asked what the Senate should do about Senator Domenici's conduct, DI noted simply, "The Senate Ethics Committee has begun a preliminary inquiry."

One questioner elicited this tribute to the law of unintended consequences:

Washington: Has your view of the GOP changed in light of your treatment of late? Have employment prospects improved with this publicity?

IGLESIAS: Washington: I'm a disaffected Republican. My party doesn't practice what it preaches as to compassion. That being said, this scandal has resulted in unimaginable employment possibilites. Good can really come from bad.

My favorite question, I think, came from a participant in Chicago, who asked DI to forget "the underlying subject of this matter" and offer a veteran prosecutor's evaluation of the constantly shifting testimony of Attorney General Idiot Al "The Torture Guy" Gonzales.

IGLESIAS: Chicago: Any witness that keeps changing his story as to basic facts is an unreliable witness. You have to decide if you want to put this person on the stand due to credibility issues. You have to have a frank discussion with them before they testify because you know you can't put a witness on the stand that you believe may be lying.

Spoken like a canny veteran prosecutor!

A Hispanic questioner from Princeton, pronouncing himself "very dissapointed and extremely disillusioned" with Idiot Al, wondered about the effect of this scandal "on other aspiring Hispanics in the future":

IGLESIAS: Princeton: I hope this scandal does not have a chilling effect on other Hispanics/Latinos seeking public office.

What DI didn't have to say is that, ironically, he has wound up giving Hispanic-Americans a healthy jolt of the ethnic pride that was supposed to come from the appointment of "The Torture Guy" as attorney general.

It was left to a questioner from Las Cruces, in DI's home state, to wonder whether Sen. Arlen Specter will ever learn how to pronounce Iglesias's name.

IGLESIAS: Las Cruces: I sure hope so. It's not any harder than "Specter."

We tend to forget that destroying our hard-won democratic system is hard work, and requires a shitload of team players. Meet Monica M. Goodling!

"I knew she must think that everything was unraveling. And, you know, she was right about that."
--David Margolis, an official in the Justice Department, telling the Washington Post that Monica Goodling "was 'shaken to her core' by the [U.S. attorney purge] controversy and sobbed for '30 to 45 minutes' during a meeting in his office shortly before she resigned"

Let's play make-believe. Let's say you're the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia--and thus a pretty darned important person, right? Let's say it's the fall of 2006, and you need to hire a staff prosecutor. You've got an excellent candidate, a career prosecutor who has in fact worked in your office as a special assistant prosecutor. He also has federal government experience at EPA, working on civil rights cases.

The only problem is that the appointment requires the approval of a 33-year-old nonentity whose legal background is based on a worthless degree from a law school that graduates highly trained ideological attack dogs who are legal ignoramuses, and who has spent her career, such as it is, working tirelessly to turn our judicial system into a tool of far-right-wing ideologues and society's overprivileged.

As you guessed, the situation isn't hypothetical. "You" are Jeffrey A. Taylor [above]; the prosecutor you want to hire is Seth Adam Meinero; and it turns out that the blitheringly, caustically incompetent sociopath in question, one Monica M. Goodling, actually has the power to block your appointment, at least for a while (as Dan Eggen and Carol D. Leonnig report in the Post article)--

saying that Meinero was too "liberal" for the nonpolitical position, according to two sources familiar with the dispute.

The tussle over Meinero, who was eventually hired at Taylor's insistence [involving his execution of an end around through an even more powerful DoJ legal nonentity], led to a Justice Department investigation of whether Goodling improperly weighed political affiliation when reviewing applicants for rank-and-file prosecutor jobs, the sources said.

Goodling, of course, has been testifying today before the House Judiciary Committee, equipped with legal immunity--because, you'll recall, she originally refused to testify on Fifth Amendment grounds (and didn't even have the simple decency to show up to do it, the way it's normally done). She took the Fifth, you'll recall again, because she was fraidy-scared of the hostile environment in the committees. Those meanies function in the reality-based world, which is so different from the intergalactic world of outer-space thugs, megalomanical sociopaths, and full-blown psychopaths that she's accustomed to. Why, the meanies might, you know, hold her to account for her behavior!

According to the Post account, everyone seems to agree that Monica was a tireless (if sharp-tongued and domineering) worker. But tireless work in the cause of implacable evil, willfully advancing the ideological smithereening of the most fundamental fairness of the U.S. justice system, isn't admirable, not the tiniest bit. It merely compounds the evil--and in all likelihood it has also been, along the way, multifariously illegal. It is, in other words, something that a competent and fair-minded team of prosecutors should be scrutinizing for appropriate indictments.

Unfortunately, it looks as if she has to be given a "Get Out of Jail Free" card in the hope of getting even a tiny bit of truth out of her about the people she serviced so zealously.

Goodling had been a divisive figure at the Justice Department since she arrived in early 2002, gaining a reputation for having a mercurial temperament and being prickly toward career employees, said numerous current and former officials who worked with her.

Goodling and [D. Kyle] Sampson [above, then chief of staff to Attorney General Idiot Al "The Torture Guy" Gonzales] "knew politics, not law," said Bruce Fein, a senior Justice official during the Reagan administration. "This extent [of] neophytes running the department is highly irregular."

[Note, for the benefit of young folk with no memory of Bruce Fein [left]: Back in the Nixon-Reagan years he was known as a whiny little snot whom the media turned to to represent the most extreme right-wing legal position then expressable outside mental institutions. Cultural and legal historians will note the galactic distance our society has traveled in the intervening decades.]

Of course, what we know so far about our Monica's shenanigans is surely only the tip of the iceberg.

E-mails and other documents show that Goodling, who was also Justice's liaison to the White House, played a central role in arranging for the appointment of Tim Griffin, a former Republican National Committee official and aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove, as the U.S. attorney in Little Rock.

Goodling also met last summer with two New Mexico Republicans who complained about then-U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias, who was later fired. In another case, she single-handedly blocked the dismissal of a North Carolina prosecutor who for more than a year had been on the list of candidates to be fired.

The dispute with Taylor came last fall, when Taylor heard that Goodling was thwarting his effort to hire Meinero, sources said.

Taylor complained to Goodling directly, according to two sources who were told about the conversation, saying that a U.S. attorney's office hires all kinds of people. Taylor also complained to Sampson, who was a friend and eventually gave Taylor the authority to bypass Goodling.

Taylor mentioned the experience to U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg of Alexandria, the sources said. After Rosenberg became Gonzales's temporary chief of staff following Sampson's resignation, he asked the department's inspector general to look into Taylor's allegations, they added.

You wonder whether a hack like Monica, so desperate to devote body and soul to the bidding of the slimiest of ideological hooligans, is even capable of identifying "truth." What little she has already said publicly appears to be either barefaced lies or delusions--like the notion that the purged U.S. attorneys were fired for poor performance, notwithstanding the stellar reviews many of them had in their files. (Is it possible to imagine such a person having any say at all in such decisions, let alone the quite considerable say she seems to have had?)

As often happens, people who devote their lives to the service of lies and delusions wind up playing the "unfairness" card. Eggen and Leonnig note: "Goodling's attorney, who has accused Democratic lawmakers of having already made up their minds about his client's role, did not return e-mail and telephone messages left at his office yesterday." A quick skim of the firedoglake live bloggings of Monica's testimony in this morning's session (they resume at 2), it doesn't appear as if she has a whole lot more to say.

Former "direct supervisor" of U.S. attorneys says he "will not sit by and watch good people smeared," and has high praise for most Purge-Gate victims

A couple of months ago, thanks to a tip from Michael Froomkin of Discourse.net, I paid tribute to former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey as the man who brought "Prosecutor Pat" Fitzgerald in to investigate the leak of Valerie Wilson's CIA identity. In mattters of law we place great stock in Discourse, who argued that Comey, in his capacity as acting attorney general with the recusal of his boss, AG John Ashcroft,

selected Patrick Fitzgerald because Comey believed Fitzgerald was the best US Attorney in the nation, and thus the best person for the job. (Comey behaved with similar rectitude when he took a principled stand against unfettered domestic surveillance.) And in due course, naturally, Comey got punished for his honesty, being passed over for the top job at Justice [when Ashcroft moved on].

Froomkin called Comey "an honest man" and a "patriot." Now the former No. 2 man in the Justice Department has resurfaced. Yesterday he offered a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee his perspective on the Bush regime's purge of U.S. attorneys. The Washington Post's Dan Eggen begins his report:

A former deputy attorney general lavished praise yesterday on most of the eight U.S. attorneys who were fired after he left the job, testifying that only one of them had serious performance problems.

James B. Comey, the Justice Department's second in command from 2003 until August 2005, also told a House Judiciary subcommittee that although he was the "direct supervisor" of all U.S attorneys, he was never informed about an effort by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and his aides to remove a large group of prosecutors that began in early 2005.

"My experience with the U.S. attorneys just listed was very positive," Comey said, referring to six of the former prosecutors who testified in Congress in March. He added that the reasons given for their firings "have not been consistent with my experience" and that "I had very positive encounters with these folks."

The former deputy AG commented specifically on the fired U.S. attorneys:

Comey was effusive in his praise of several of the fired prosecutors, saying that only [Kevin V.] Ryan [of San Francisco] had serious management difficulties.

He described Paul K. Charlton of Arizona as "one of the best," said he had a "very positive view" of David C. Iglesias of New Mexico, and called Daniel G. Bogden of Las Vegas "straight as a Nevada highway and a fired-up guy." Of John McKay of Seattle, Comey said: "I was inspired by him."

Perhaps most damaging to the Justice Department was Comey's description of Carol C. Lam of San Diego as "a fine U.S. attorney." He acknowledged that he was concerned about Lam's record on firearms cases but said he had discussed the issue with her and did not see it as a firing offense.

Comey said that while he was deputy attorney general he did not have much interaction with fired prosecutor Bud Cummins of Little Rock. But he called Cummins a "good man" in a recent e-mail exchange released yesterday, adding that he "will not sit by and watch good people smeared."

Comey's comments made clear that the claims by the nitwit hacks put in positions of staggering authority, claims that Comey had been involved in the screening of U.S. attorneys for removal, are the usual Bush regime bullshit.

Comey testified that he had a 15-minute conversation with [Kyle] Sampson [then chief of staff to AG Idiot Al "The Torture Guy" Gonzales, and the stupefyingly unqualified thug apparently--and incredibly--given the power to fire U.S. attorneys] in February 2005 about prosecutors Comey considered weak performers. He said he had no idea until recently that the conversation was related to an effort by Sampson and the White House to identify and remove prosecutors considered insufficiently loyal.

With regard to the new allegations that Bush regime Justice bimbo Monica "Miss Fifth Amendment" Goodling illegally screened candidates for assistant U.S. attorney positions for political loyalty,

Comey said it was "very troubling" to hear allegations that political considerations may have been taken into account in the hiring of assistant U.S. attorneys, or AUSAs.

"I don't know how you would put that genie back in the bottle, if people started to believe we were hiring our AUSAs for political reasons," he said.

THE NATURE OF JUSTICE: MONICA GOODLING, ABU GONZALES, THE U.S. SENATE ELECTIONS

Lately I've talked a bit about the insidious nature of the Republican Party's "Mormon Mafia." The Bush Regime has also been using shock troops from Pat Robertson's shady Regent "university" and other Buy Bull Schools as zombies strictly trained to eschew independent thought in favor of hierarchal obedience. Dahlia Lithwick explains how Pat Robertson's law school is changing America at Slate and in today's Washington Post with the help of confused, brain-dead little automatons like Monica Goodling.

A 1995 graduate of Messiah College, an evangelical Christian school, and a 1999 graduate of Pat Robertson's Regent University Law School, Goodling is an improbable character for a political scandal. Her chief claim to professional fame appears to have been loyalty to the president and to the process of reshaping the Justice Department in his image (and, thus, His image). A former career official there told the Washington Post that Goodling "forced many very talented career people out of main Justice so she could replace them with junior people that were either loyal to the administration or would score her some points." And as she rose at Justice, a former classmate said, Goodling "developed a very positive reputation for people coming from Christian schools into Washington looking for employment in government, always ready to offer encouragement and be a sounding board."

For the past month, every morning at breakfast I've sat down with my handy little pocket-sized U.S. Constitution and read it while starting my day with some delicious and healthy victuals-- usually half a melon or papaya stuffed with various berries, lemon juice, raw pecans and ground-up flaxseeds. There are 7 Articles that make up the original Constitution and the last one, the 7th, just pertains to ratification. The 6th Article is the last one with anything substantive about how the Founding Fathers felt the new country they were founding needed to be run. The very last clause of the Article VI is one they probably don't spend much time on at Regent or at other Buy Bull schools-- unless it is to plot ways to get around it or rid of it:

no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the Unites States.

I doubt Alberto Gonzales eats a healthy breakfast and I doubt he spends much time reading the Constitution; he's too busy presiding over the Departent of Chaos. His unrelenting attacks on behalf of the Bush Regime on the Constitution have been shocking, even to the few honest Republicans left paying any attention. (They wouldn't have been graduates of make-believe colleges, Liberty "University," Regent "University" or Superstition U.)

Gonzales acknowledged that the Constitution declares "habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless ... in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.'' But he insisted that "there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution.''

Specter was incredulous, asking how the Constitution could bar the suspension of a right that didn't exist -- a right, he noted, that was first recognized in medieval England as a shield against the king's power to dispatch troublesome subjects to royal dungeons.

Even extreme right wing loons with the very best Wingnutia pedigrees have been repelled by Abu Gonzales' cavalier attitude towards the Constitution. Adolph Hitler's Nazi Regime and George Bush's Republican Regime see eye to eye on treaties and constitutions and things like that being mere scraps of annoying and bothersome paper. The Senate should have been more serious in their deliberations when Bush nominated Gonzales to be Attorney General. Confirming someone like Gonzales guaranteed zombies like Goodling.

Gonzales may be forced to resign in the next week or two-- it's likely-- but what about the senators who confirmed this man? Were they doing a good job or should they be fired too? One third of the Senate is up for re-election next year. Every single Republican facing the voters in 2008 voted to confirm Gonzales, as did all but 36 Democrats. I would like to recommend that you keep in mind the names of a few senators whose re-elections might be in jeopardy because of their rubber stamping of Bush's toxic agenda.

Alexander (R-TN)
Coleman (R-MN)
Collins (R-ME)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Craig (R-ID)
Dole (R-NC)
Domenici (R-NM)
Graham (R-SC)
McConnell (R-KY)
Sessions (R-AL)
Smith (R-OR)
Sununu (R-NH)
Warner (R-VA)

Abandoning the Democrats working diligently to derail Gonzales and the travesty he predictably made of the Department of Justice were the usual suspects like Lieberman and the two reactionary Nelsons, Ben from Nebraska and Bill from Florida, but the 3 of them are safe from the voters for 5 more years. Faithless Democrats up for re-election-- for whom the DSCC will soon come asking you for contributions to save their undeserving necks-- are Landrieu (D-LA) and Pryor (D-AR).


UPDATE: WHAT'S IT GOING TO TAKE FOR BUSH TO FIRE GONZALES? MUST RIGHT WING MANIACS LIKE NEWT GINGRICH AND HOLY JOE LIEBERMAN TELL HIM HE HAS TO DO IT?

Well, it's unlikely that Joe Lieberman-- who got in a fight with Snarlin' Arlen on CNN today, Specter defending Speaker Pelosi's trip to Syria and Lieberman duly reading his Rove talking points-- will ever go against Bush on this, but Newt Gingrich just did.

Joining a growing list of Republicans, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Sunday that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should consider resigning. The possible presidential candidate said the botched firing of U.S. attorneys has destroyed Gonzales' credibility as the nation's top law enforcer.

"I think the country, in fact, would be much better served to have a new team at the Justice Department, across the board," Gingrich said. "I cannot imagine how he is going to be effective for the rest of this administration. ... They're going to be involved in endless hearings."

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, who is helping lead the investigation into the firing of eight federal prosecutors, said Gingrich's comments pointed to building bipartisan support for a new attorney general.

Somehow I don't think bipartisanship is what Gingrich had in mind. But it is becoming more and more obvious to Republicans in DC that the sooner they bury Gonzales' already rigid, stinking corpse, the fewer Republicans facing the electorate next year will have another unanswerable question from voters to confront.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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