No Justice At Justice Department

According to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, bad press is far worse than a jail cell. Due to the embarrassment of those that hired U.S. Attorneys for political reasons, Mukasey feels that they have suffered enough and the rule of law and justice need not apply. When you are living under the umbrella of the Bush Administration, officials feel untouchable.

From The Huffington Post:

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.

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."

Other intrusions of Bush administration politics into department hirings and firings remain under investigation. Mukasey said he is awaiting reports on the firing of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006 and the hiring practices in the department's civil rights division.

Sharp words may sound cutting, but anything that comes out of Mukasey's mouth is pure, unadulterated bullshit. The best (or worst) was the statement that not every violation of the law (a crime) is a crime. Confused? Yeah, well when it comes to Mukasey and other Bushies, doublespeak is one of the only rules they actually follow.

Sometimes Being A Big GOP Donor Isn't Enough

The recent update on the U.S. Attorney scandal revealed that Monica Goodling did indeed break the law numerous times by using political factors to determine who would and wouldn't be good candidates for the office. Being a good loyal Republican was key to the process, but even some of those didn't make the cut.

From The Times-Union:

The IG report discusses how the Bush White House tried to get favorites appointed to lifetime posts as immigration judges, and reached out to friends in New York. One passage deals with a judge candidate from New York recommended by an unnamed congressman in June 2005.

The congressman's staff gave the candidate's qualifications to the White House as "great Republican" and "long time donor to the local GOP." The "local" Republican Party officials said they could vouch for the candidate, whose name was forwarded for an interview, according to the report.

The New York Republican nominee -- also unnamed, alas -- didn't score well.

"The candidate's conduct during his ... interview causes us to question whether he possesses the appropriate judicial temperament and demeanor to serve as an immigration judge," a Bush administration e-mail quoted in the report says. "The candidate used profanity during the interview, acted abrasively, and when asked what his greatest weakness was, responded 'blondes.' "

Perhaps Bush's minions saw what this guy said and had at least a few principles left to realize that maybe this guy wouldn't be the most impartial of judges....and godforbid a possible terrost wear a blonde wig, we might have all been in serious trouble. Now I wonder who might this judicial candidate might have been?

How Do You "Cage" A Vote?

Monica Goodling referred to vote caging in her testimony to Congress last month, but no one really paid attention to it. Even Congresswoman Linda Sanchez asked Monica for a definition of the term. The press dug in for the dirt she laid out on Gonzales and McNulty but ignored this nugget. The Bush Administration was up to so many evil (and criminal) deeds that it is hard to keep up with them all.

From Slate Magazine:

Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., asked Goodling to "explain what caging is," clarifying that she was unfamiliar with the term. Goodling fumbled around, muttered something about, "it's a direct-mail term, that people who do direct mail, when, when they separate addresses that may be good versus addresses that may be bad," then made sure to end with, "I don't … I believe that Mr. Griffin doesn't believe that he, that he did anything wrong there and there, there actually is a very good reason for it, for a very good explanation." Which explanation Goodling did not then provide.

(snip)

Vote caging is an illegal trick to suppress minority voters (who tend to vote Democrat) by getting them knocked off the voter rolls if they fail to answer registered mail sent to homes they aren't living at (because they are, say, at college or at war). The Republican National Committee reportedly stopped the practice following a consent decree in a 1986 case. Google the term and you'll quickly arrive at the Wizard of Oz of caging, Greg Palast, investigative reporter and author of the wickedly funny Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans—Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild. Palast started reporting allegations of Republican vote caging for the BBC's Newsnight in 2004. He's been almost alone on the story since then. Palast contends, both in Armed Madhouse and widely through the liberal blogosphere, that vote caging, an illegal voter-suppression scheme, happened in Florida in 2004 this way:

The Bush-Cheney operatives sent hundreds of thousands of letters marked "Do not forward" to voters' homes. Letters returned ("caged") were used as evidence to block these voters' right to cast a ballot on grounds they were registered at phony addresses. Who were the evil fakers? Homeless men, students on vacation and—you got to love this—American soldiers. Oh yeah: most of them are Black voters.

So we knew this was going down during the election but no one in the mainstream really reported on much about it. People like Greg Palast were all over it, but the only people that were paying attention to it were in the activist left.

Now we have a Republican operative who recently left the White House admitting that these crimes took place. Tim Griffin did a lot of work disenfranchising minority voters and was paid royally for it. He was even selected to replace one of the fired U.S. Attorneys. So all of these scandals merge together to create what we know as the corrupt Republican party...in a nutshell.

Fighting Republican Memory Loss

There is a new thing on the market if you keep forgetting things like crimes committed while in the Bush Administration. Do you have some of the problems below? Democratic Committee Chairs might have an answer for you.

More Of Goodling's Goodies

She sounds like a scared and confused little girl on the stand. Whereas Alberto kept saying "I can't recall," legislators investigating Goodling got all sorts of interesting things to come out of Monica's mouth today. And no, it has nothing to do with cigars.

Pleading The Fifth Is The New Trend

The hot thing to do these days is to escape self-incrimination, especially if you happen to work with or in the Bush Administration. Monica Goodling has been plastered all over the news (to some degree) but she has competition now from Rove's ex-underling Susan Ralston. As one that worked closely with Bush's Brain, she was privy to a lot of important information and evidently by taking the fifth, criminal activity as well.

From RawStory:

Susan Ralston, the former executive assistant to top White House adviser Karl Rove, invoked her rights against self-incrimination while she was being asked to answer questions by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the Committee's Chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman, announced in a memo Tuesday. The deposition for which she sat concerned contacts between convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Rove, as well as the White House more broadly.

"The subjects this morning that she will be unable to testify to...are the subjects of the relationship between Jack Abramoff and his associates and White House officials, including Ms. Ralston, and the subject of the use by White House officials of political e-mail accounts at the RNC," Ralston's lawyer, Bradford Berenson said, during the May 10 deposition. "She has material, useful information about both of those subjects."

With a grant of immunity, Ms. Ralston just may provide the goods to finger Karl Rove as the evil mastermind of the White House. It is far past the time for this man to be forced out of the Executive branch. Since George would never kick out a loyal partner such as Rove (nor Alberto as well), someone else will have to do it for him. Now if Congress could take the next step past issuing subpoenas and physically remove him from office, we can truly start to get somewhere.

Goodling Gives Up Gonzales

Words can't describe my joy to hear Monica Goodling squeezed by Rep. Artur Davis to admit that Gonzales gave 'inaccurate testimony' to the Congress while under oath.

Monica Goodling, An Immune Felon

Ex-Justice Official Monica Goodling pled the fifth last month to avoid possibly incriminating herself over the U.S. Attorney scandal. Well her testimony today showed that she did indeed commit crimes by helping to get rid of several U.S. Attorneys due to political reasons. Rep. Bobby Smith (D-VA) nailed her on the point, even though she tried to weasel out of admitting she broke the law.

From the AP:

Goodling, 33, quit the department last month and initially pleaded the Fifth Amendment on Wednesday. After being granted court-approved immunity, she admitted that in some instances she may have weighed the political views and affilations of job applicants for jobs as career prosecutors _ a violation of federal law.

"I may have gone too far, and I may have taken inappropriate political considerations into account on some occasions," Goodling said. "And I regret those mistakes."

Justice Department documents show Goodling attended numerous meetings over a year's time about the plans to fire the U.S. attorneys and corresponded with the White House and at least one of the ousted prosecutors before the dismissals were ordered.

Goodling also testified that Deputy Attorney General McNulty was not fully candid in his testimony and that it was pretty much all his fault. Placing blame on others while squeaking through on an immunity deal seems to be turning out perfectly for her and the White House. McNulty has clearly become the fall guy for the Administration so that Gonzales can remain in his post.

Though Goodling forgets that there are tons of emails and documents showing she met with the White House over who to fire. Getting a hold of those documents have been tough, but the pieces of the puzzle are starting to fall into place and it paints a much larger picture than just a spotlight on Paul McNulty. In the end, the portrait will show all of them in the sun, hopefully shown being led into their jail cells, where they belong (Monica excluded of course).

Gotcha Goodling!

It was easy to see that Monica Goodling was up to no good as the liaison between the White House and the Attorney General's office. Pleading the fifth to avoid questioning by Congress was a dead giveaway, but it wasn't definitive proof. Just as she got an immunity deal to testify on the Hill, emails in the weekly document dump on Friday show she was possibly committing obstruction of justice.

From Crooks and Liars:

Another Friday, another document dump from the DOJ. As I was scanning through this set, I came across this one from Monica "I plead the Fifth" Goodling. Notice the instruction in boldface (see below the fold for full size image):

Yes, that's an instruction to delete documents. And notice the date: February 12, 2007. That's well after Congress began investigating this matter. I don't believe any subpoenas or document requests had yet been issued (someone please correct me if I'm wrong about that), but it was pretty clear by then that document requests were likely.

It is possible that she was just careless and sloppy, but as a senior legal counsel....give me a break. She knew what she was doing. We are talking about the Bush Administration. Nothing is done by mistake when covering up their mess. That does not include foreign and domestic policy blunders of course. Since this was most likely deliberate while knowing that they were under investigation by Congress, it constitutes obstruction. I may not be a lawyer, and Goodling may have gone to a fourth tier law school, but I know, she knows and any lawyer does as well that Goodling committed a serious error.

Iglesias Might Get His Wish, Goodling Gets Immunity

You can see here that one of the victims of U.S. Attorney-gate, David Iglesias discussed that the key to breaking the scandal wide open is to get Monica Goodling to talk. She pleaded the 5th a few weeks ago so she wouldn't expose herself to her actions that violated the law concerning the White House and the Justice Department. What she knows is extremely important.



Now Goodling was given immunity by Congress today. A few Republicans on the House Justice Committee tried to deny the immunity grant, but more than two-thirds of the committee allowed it to pass. With her testimony given under oath, she can finally come clean without fear of being held in contempt by Congress. She does indeed hold the keys to kingdom, and hopefully, to Alberto Gonzales' demise along with anyone in the White House who was connected to the scandal.

Gonzales Can't Get His Lies Straight

Generally when one tells a lie it isn't too hard to manage it, when it turns into 5 lies to cover the first one, it gets difficult. Yet when the lies are all over the place, and the people that know your secrets aren't allowed to talk to you, it starts getting insane. Thats why things are going crazy over at Alberto Gonzales' study room this past week.

From Newsweek:

April 16, 2007 issue - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has virtually wiped his public schedule clean to bone up for his long-awaited April 17 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee—a session widely seen as a crucial test as to whether he will survive the U.S. attorney mess. But even his own closest advisers are nervous about whether he is up to the task. At a recent "prep" for a prospective Sunday talk-show interview, Gonzales's performance was so poor that top aides scrapped any live appearances. During the March 23 session in the A.G.'s conference room, Gonzales was grilled by a team of top aides and advisers—including former Republican National Committee chair Ed Gillespie and former White House lawyer Tim Flanigan—about what he knew about the plan to fire seven U.S. attorneys last fall. But Gonzales kept contradicting himself and "getting his timeline confused," said one participant who asked not to be identified talking about a private meeting. His advisers finally got "exasperated" with him, the source added. "He's not ready," Tasia Scolinos, Gonzales's public-affairs chief, told the A.G.'s top aides after the session was over, said the source. Asked for comment, Scolinos told NEWSWEEK: "This was the first session of this kind that we'd done."

Despite bringing out all the big guns to try and salvage his career, all the spinsters in the world can't help Gonzales when gets out in front of Senator Leahy and company. They are afraid of the Senate Judiciary Committee and it shows. The now former Justice Dept. aide Monica Goodling went so far as to compare them to the infamous Senator McCarthy from fifty years ago. Memo to Monica, this hardly a purge of suspected communists, this is about justice, or lack thereof at the Justice department.