Spies "R" Us

Washington Post:

A federal intelligence court judge earlier this year secretly declared a key element of the Bush administration's wiretapping efforts illegal, according to a lawmaker and government sources, providing a previously unstated rationale for fevered efforts by congressional lawmakers this week to expand the president's spying powers.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) disclosed elements of the court's decision in remarks Tuesday to Fox News as he was promoting the administration-backed wiretapping legislation. Boehner has denied revealing classified information, but two government officials privy to the details confirmed that his remarks concerned classified information.

The administration breaks the law. So, what should we do about it? Change the law. It's good to be the king.

Associated Press:

President Bush said Friday that Congress must stay in session until it approves legislation modernizing a U.S. law governing eavesdropping on foreigners.

“So far the Democrats in Congress have not drafted a bill I can sign,” Bush said at FBI headquarters, where he was meeting with counterterror and homeland security officials. “We've worked hard and in good faith with the Democrats to find a solution, but we are not going to put our national security at risk. Time is short.”

The president, who has the power under the Constitution to keep Congress in session, said lawmakers cannot leave for their August recess this weekend as planned unless they “pass a bill that will give our intelligence community the tools they need to protect the United States.”

Earlier Friday, the White House offered an eleventh-hour accord to Democrats in the negotiations over the matter, saying it would agree to a court review of its foreign intelligence activities instead of leaving certification up to the attorney general and director of national intelligence.

Well, that's nice. Big olive branch, that. Especially given all that we now know about the partisan criminality of that attorney general.

More Domestic Spying?

Abu Gonzales's testimony before Congress, yesterday, raised some interesting questions. Glenn Greenwald explains. Think Progress has the video.

Abu Gonzales Must Be Removed From Office

Just read this Washington Post analysis of his latest disastrous testimony before Congress. This man is the nation's top law enforcement officer. It is absolutely beyond belief.

Nixonian

AP:

President Bush, moving toward a constitutional showdown with Congress, asserted executive privilege Thursday and rejected lawmakers' demands for documents that could shed light on the firings of federal prosecutors.

Bush's attorney told Congress the White House would not turn over subpoenaed documents for former presidential counsel Harriet Miers and former political director Sara Taylor. Congressional panels want the documents for their investigations of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' stewardship of the Justice Department, including complaints of undue political influence.

The Democratic chairmen of the two committees seeking the documents accused Bush of stonewalling and disdain for the law, and said they would press forward with enforcing the subpoenas....

''Increasingly, the president and vice president feel they are above the law,'' said Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. He portrayed the president's actions as ''Nixonian stonewalling.''

Hmmm. How did Congress deal with Nixon?

More Evidence Gonzales Is A Criminal

The Washington Post has conducted an extensive analysis of Bush Administration immigration judge appointees, and concludes that the Administration has politicized these judicial selections, despite laws specifically forbidding such a practice. In the wake of the U.S. Attorneys scandal, which inspired the investigation, this blatantly illegal behavior should come as no surprise; but it is yet another example of the Administration's monomaniacal obsession with politicizing absolutely every aspect of government, to the detriment of the government's ability to function.

As the Post explains:

The Bush administration increasingly emphasized partisan political ties over expertise in recent years in selecting the judges who decide the fate of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, despite laws that preclude such considerations, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.

At least one-third of the immigration judges appointed by the Justice Department since 2004 have had Republican connections or have been administration insiders, and half lacked experience in immigration law, Justice Department, immigration court and other records show.

Two newly appointed immigration judges were failed candidates for the U.S. Tax Court nominated by President Bush; one fudged his taxes and the other was deemed unqualified to be a tax judge by the nation's largest association of lawyers. Both were Republican loyalists.

Also appointed were a Republican election law specialist from New Jersey, a former treasurer of the Republican Party in Louisiana, a White House staffer, and an anti-pornography advocate. None had any apparent qualification to be involved in immigration issues; and one El Paso appointee was later ruled to lack even the minimum qualification.

According to sworn testimony before Congressional investigators, the Department of Justice abandoned the traditional civil service process for selecting judges in 2004. Our friends Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling reportedly explained that they thought the practice was legal, but DOJ spokesman Dean Boyd says it was not. These appointments are made by the Attorney General, and this politicization took place under both Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales.

According to news reports, the no-confidence resolution against Gonzales will be voted on today. Given this latest report, it's time for Congress to realize that no-confidence just doesn't cut it. The man breaks laws. He is a criminal. He is the nation's chief law enforcement officer. It's time to get serious about dealing with him.

Three Bloggers To Read, Today

Digby.

CanYouBeAngryAndStillDream.

Tod Westlake.

More Perjury From Our Chief Law Enforcement Officer

Washington Post:

The Justice Department considered dismissing many more U.S. attorneys than officials have previously acknowledged, with at least 26 prosecutors suggested for termination between February 2005 and December 2006, according to sources familiar with documents withheld from the public.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales testified last week that the effort was limited to eight U.S. attorneys fired since last June, and other administration officials have said that only a few others were suggested for removal.

In fact, D. Kyle Sampson, then Gonzales's chief of staff, considered more than two dozen U.S. attorneys for termination, according to lists compiled by him and his colleagues, the sources said.

Even The Washington Post Is Outraged!

Washington Post:

JAMES B. COMEY, the straight-as-an-arrow former No. 2 official at the Justice Department, yesterday offered the Senate Judiciary Committee an account of Bush administration lawlessness so shocking it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source. The episode involved a 2004 nighttime visit to the hospital room of then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft by Alberto Gonzales, then the White House counsel, and Andrew H. Card Jr., then the White House chief of staff. Only the broadest outlines of this visit were previously known: that Mr. Comey, who was acting as attorney general during Mr. Ashcroft's illness, had refused to recertify the legality of the administration's warrantless wiretapping program; that Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card had tried to do an end-run around Mr. Comey; that Mr. Ashcroft had rebuffed them.

Mr. Comey's vivid depiction, worthy of a Hollywood script, showed the lengths to which the administration and the man who is now attorney general were willing to go to pursue the surveillance program. First, they tried to coerce a man in intensive care -- a man so sick he had transferred the reins of power to Mr. Comey -- to grant them legal approval. Having failed, they were willing to defy the conclusions of the nation's chief law enforcement officer and pursue the surveillance without Justice's authorization. Only in the face of the prospect of mass resignations -- Mr. Comey, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and most likely Mr. Ashcroft himself -- did the president back down.

When even the Washington Post is outraged at Bush's abuses, you know this is big. Here's the money quote:

That Mr. Gonzales is now in charge of the department he tried to steamroll may be most disturbing of all.

I'll go a step farther: Comey's testimony makes clear that Bush was directly involved. Think about what that means.

Passing The Buck

It's the Bush-league way!

AP:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday he relied on his resigning deputy more than any other aide to decide which U.S. attorneys should be fired last year.

His comments come a less than a day after Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty announced he would resign at the end of the summer — a decision that people familiar with the plans said was hastened by the controversy over the purge of eight prosecutors.

Democratic opponents of the Bush administration say the firings were politically motivated and have called for the resignation of Gonzales, the top U.S. law enforcement official who heads the Justice Department.

The best available evidence, thus far, tends to exonerate McNulty of direct complicity. Typical of the Bush Administration to try to shift blame to a subordinate. The buck always stops somewhere else.

Surprise, Surprise

Murray Waas, of the National Journal:

The Bush administration has withheld a series of e-mails from Congress showing that senior White House and Justice Department officials worked together to conceal the role of Karl Rove in installing Timothy Griffin, a protégé of Rove's, as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

The withheld records show that D. Kyle Sampson, who was then-chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, consulted with White House officials in drafting two letters to Congress that appear to have misrepresented the circumstances of Griffin's appointment as U.S. attorney and of Rove's role in supporting Griffin.

In one of the letters that Sampson drafted, dated February 23, 2007, the Justice Department told four Senate Democrats it was not aware of any role played by senior White House adviser Rove in attempting to name Griffin to the U.S. attorney post. A month later, the Justice Department apologized in writing to the Senate Democrats for the earlier letter, saying it had been inaccurate in denying that Rove had played a role.

Abu Gonzales Caught Lying- Again

Washington Post:

The former Justice Department official who carried out the firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year told Congress that several of the prosecutors had no performance problems and that a memo on the firings was distributed at a Nov. 27 meeting attended by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, a Democratic senator said yesterday.

The statements to House and Senate investigators by Michael A. Battle, former director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, represent another potential challenge to the credibility of Gonzales, who has said that he never saw any documents about the firings and that he had "lost confidence" in the prosecutors because of performance problems.

Battle's statements, relayed to reporters yesterday by Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), came as Gonzales prepares for a make-or-break appearance on Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Prepared testimony released yesterday indicates Gonzales will apologize to the fired prosecutors for the way they were treated and will acknowledge that he has been "less than precise" in describing his role in the firings.

Less than precise? Is that what they're calling it, now?

More Lies

New York Times:

A Justice Department e-mail message released on Friday shows that the former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales proposed replacement candidates for United States attorneys nearly a year before they were dismissed in December 2006. The department has repeatedly stated that no successors were selected before the dismissals.

The Jan. 9, 2006, e-mail message, written by D. Kyle Sampson, who resigned last month as the top aide to Mr. Gonzales, identified five Bush administration officials, most of them Justice Department employees, whose names were sent to the White House for consideration as possible replacements for prosecutors slated for dismissal.

The e-mail message and several related documents provide the first evidence that Mr. Sampson, the Justice Department official in charge of the dismissals, had focused on who would succeed the ousted prosecutors. Justice officials have repeatedly said that seven of the eight prosecutors were removed without regard to who might succeed them.

These firings were purely political. It was the politicization of Justice. It could not be more clear. This Administration makes Nixon's look like a bunch of amateurs.

And As For Those U.S. Attorneys Who WEREN'T Fired?

John Nichols, of The Nation:

The question of whether any of the 85 U.S. Attorneys who were not fired by the Bush administration may have engaged in political prosecutions blew open Tuesday, when key members of the Senate Judiciary Committee demanded files pertaining to a botched prosecution in Wisconsin.

Committee chair Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, and five other senators have asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for documents dealing with the case of a Wisconsin state employee who was tried in a case that played out during the course of the 2006 gubernatorial race in that state. Republicans used the prosecution as part of a television attack campaign aimed at defeating Democratic Governor James Doyle.

U.S. Attorney Stephen Biskupic obtained an election-season conviction of the state employee, Georgia Thompson, on charges that she steered a state contract to a Doyle donor. But a federal appeals court last week overturned that conviction with a stinging decision that complained about a lack of evidence. One of the appeals court judges said Biskupic's case was "beyond thin."

This scandal is still in the very early stages. Bush was using the Justice Department as a political attack dog. The word "Nixonian" could not be more applicable. Stay tuned.

Bloomberg/LAT Poll: Abu Gonzales Should Go, White House Staff Should Testify!

Bloomberg:

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should resign, most Americans say, and White House aides should be forced to testify before Congress about their involvement in the dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys.

In a new Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll, conducted April 5 to 9, 53 percent of respondents said Gonzales should leave his post. Seventy-four percent said White House staff members who had discussions about the firings with Gonzales's chief of staff should testify under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which the White House has refused to allow.

Also:

In other findings, the poll showed that a strong majority of Americans believe the U.S. is on the wrong track, and President George W. Bush's approval rating was 36 percent, a record low. In addition, a majority of respondents said they disapproved of the performance of the Democratic-led Congress, in part because of continuing divisions over the war in Iraq. The poll of 1,373 adults has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

I'll say it again: The Democrats cannot be too aggressive in their investigations of this Administration's corruption. The public is with them! Other polls show that even though there is majority disapproval of Congress, that number has dropped significantly since the Democrats took control. It will continue to drop if they continue to fight back against Bush.

House Judiciary Committee Subpoenas Abu Gonzales

New York Times:

The House Judiciary Committee demanded more documents today from Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales in the panel’s inquiry into the dismissals of eight United States attorneys.

The committee’s chairman, Representative John Conyers, wrote Mr. Gonzales that the documents were being subpoenaed because the Justice Department’s cooperation so far in turning over documents “falls far short of what is needed.”

Mr. Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, said he appreciated Mr. Gonzales’s cooperation in supplying some documents to the committee’s subcommittee on commercial and administrative law. Still, Mr. Conyers said, the department has not responded fully despite weeks of negotiations with the subcommittee.

Why are they not cooperating? What are they hiding?

Abu Gonzales Given One Last Chance To Voluntarily Turn Over Evidence

TPM Muckraker:

One last chance, or the subpoenas come out.

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee along with ranking member Arlen Specter (R-PA) wrote Attorney General Alberto Gonzales yesterday to ask again for certain withheld documents relevant to the U.S. attorney firings. If Gonzales doesn't turn them over by tomorrow, the committee will issue subpoenas for them on Thursday, they write.

They have a link to the actual letter.

Alberto Gonzalez's coup d'etat

That's the title of Joe Conason's analysis of the forced resignations of nine U.S. attorneys, many of whom had pursued criminal investigations of top Republicans.

Under any circumstances, the Bush administration's sudden, explicitly political dismissal and replacement of United States attorneys in judicial districts across the country would be very troubling -- both as a violation of American law enforcement traditions and as a triumph of patronage over competence.

But as the story behind these strange decisions unfolds, a familiar theme is emerging. Again, the White House and the Justice Department have been exposed in a secretive attempt to expand executive power for partisan purposes. And again, their scheming is tainted with a nasty whiff of authoritarianism....

Any such self-serving statements emanating from Alberto Gonzales should always be greeted with appropriate skepticism. So should the claim that he sought to seize control of interim U.S. attorney appointments because of his concern over the "separation of powers" issues supposedly inherent in judges' appointing prosecutors. As the McClatchy Newspapers reported on Jan. 26, Gonzales has named at least nine "conservative loyalists from the Bush administration's inner circle" to positions vacated by professional prosecutors.