Good news

It's Friday, so why not ring out the week with a good news roundup?

HABEAS CORPUS
The House is finally producing legislation that would match a Senate provision passed out of committee earlier this month. Both bills face tough floor fights and possible vetos, but it's yet another small step on reasserting the rule of law and putting terrorism back on a criminal footing, where it largely belongs.

PORK REFORM
Even as earmark reform and other ethics measures work their slow and creaky way through Congress, far more sweeping reform is taking place at the state level -- both providing an example for and increasing pressure on Congress to clean up its act. Whether you think pork is a valid government function, a necessary evil or simply evil, you have to agree that transparency in the process is a good thing. Though there's this caveat:

Even with greater transparency, will the humiliation factor work? Amid all House Appropriations Chairman David Obey's unconvincing reasons for keeping the public in the dark, he did make the fair point that even when embarrassing earmarks have been disclosed, Congress rallies around its porksters and approves the money. It's hard to shame people who have no shame.

And that's the next stage of the earmark debate. Forcing national politicians to admit to their bad spending habits is clearly difficult. Forcing them to stop, or pay the price at the polls, is the real test of "earmark reform."

Let's find out.

ENERGY INDEPENDENCE
The Senate passed an energy bill Thursday that includes a provision raising the average gas mileage requirement to 35 mpg by 2020 -- a significant increase over today's 25 mpg, even if the time frame is a long one. On the other hand, Republicans blocked the "tax hike" (see second item in link) on oil companies, as well as measures requiring electrical utilities to use far more renewable power sources. The latter item won't actually matter much, considering state regulators are already well down that path. But it does make one wonder why Republicans think the status quo is so great.

habeas corpus, earmarks, energy, politics, midtopia

Justice Department roundup

Three Justice-related stories today:

1. Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty returned to Capitol Hill to revise some of his previous testimony and remarks about the prosecutor firings. Nothing particularly explosive came out of it, but it's yet another example of a Justice official saying one thing under oath only to have to revise it when later contradicted by facts -- although in this case there are people who feel McNulty's major crime was being honest, and he's being used as a scapegoat by Alberto Gonzales' supporters.

2. Former Attorney General John Aschroft confirmed the sharp disagreement within the administration over warrantless eavesdropping during a closed-door meeting with the House Intelligence Committee, according to committee chairman Silvestro Reyes. That is yet another bit of evidence contradicting Gonzales' claim that there was not much disagreement over the policy, and underlining once again that Gonzales is either clueless or a total hack.

3. Finally and most interestingly, Bradley Schlozman -- the last Justice official to have to do over his sworn testimony -- also played a central role in politicizing the hiring of career prosecutors during a stint as acting assistant attorney general for civil rights.

Karen Stevens, Tovah Calderon and Teresa Kwong had a lot in common. They had good performance ratings as career lawyers in the Justice Department's civil rights division. And they were minority women transferred out of their jobs two years ago -- over the objections of their immediate supervisors -- by Bradley Schlozman, then the acting assistant attorney general for civil rights.

Schlozman ordered supervisors to tell the women that they had performance problems or that the office was overstaffed. But one lawyer, Conor Dugan, told colleagues that the recent Bush appointee had confided that his real motive was to "make room for some good Americans" in that high-impact office, according to four lawyers who said they heard the account from Dugan.

But wait! There's more! It's not just Democrats that were targeted, but insufficiently Bushie Republicans:

In another politically tinged conversation recounted by former colleagues, Schlozman asked a supervisor if a career lawyer who had voted for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a onetime political rival of President Bush, could still be trusted.

On top of that, he was a coward:

That spring, Schlozman told a resistant Flynn to transfer Stevens to the disability rights section. According to sources in the office, Schlozman instructed Flynn to tell Stevens that the transfer was related to performance and was her idea.

View the allegations with a grain of salt, seeing as how they all come from anonymous sources without independent confirmation. But the extensiveness of the sourcing -- five lawyers and a supervisor within the civil-rights section -- helps boost credibility. And what verifiable facts are known are consistent with the story -- in particular that the various attorneys targeted by Schlozman have all returned to their previous jobs now that Schlozman is gone. It's unlikely they would have been returned so quickly if they were truly punished on merit grounds.

Schlozman, Ashcroft, Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Two Republicans face legal scrutiny

Sen. Ted Stevens, he of the "bridge to nowhere" and other porky products, is now being investigated for his ties to an unfolding corruption scandal in Alaska.

Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in Senate history, recently hired lawyers and said the FBI told him to preserve documents. Prosecutors have questioned his friends and associates, including in some cases before a Washington grand jury, according to someone familiar with the case who spoke on condition of anonymity because grand jury matters are secret by law.

The basic case is that when Stevens decided to double the size of his home in 2000, the project was overseen by VECO, an oil services and construction company whose top executives have pleaded guilty to bribing state legislators.

His son, state Sen. Bob Stevens, has been implicated as well.

Meanwhile, in the lower 48, North Carolina's state treasurer has been indicted on drug charges.

Gov. Mark Sanford has suspended state Treasurer Thomas Ravenel after it was announced Tuesday the Charleston Republican had been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiracy to possess with the intent distribute cocaine.

Of possibly wider significance is the fact that Ravenel was also the state chairman for Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign, a post he resigned after the news came out. It's something of a Bernard Kerik redux, although a state chairman isn't quite as important as head of Homeland Security.

Ravenel is added to the Hall of Shame; Stevens is on the watch list.

Update: The Ravenel link has updated with a lot more detail. He's charged with buying around 500 grams -- 1.1 pounds -- of coke, but he apparently planned to share it with friends, not sell it.

Here's a lesson in class from Grady Patterson, the longtime Democratic treasurer that Ravenel beat in November:

"It’s my hope for Thomas Ravenel and the people of this state that the charges don’t hold true," Patterson said in a statement.

Conversely, here's a lesson in kicking people while they're down (and, incidently, convicting them before trial), courtesy of the South Carolina Democratic Party:

The S.C. Democratic Party said Ravenel was an "embarrassment." "In only a few months, Thomas Ravenel has gone from spoiled, rich kid buying his way into office to common street criminal," Democratic chairwoman Carol Khare Fowler said.

Partisans suck.

corruption, Ted Stevens, politics, midtopia

The RNC e-mail memory hole

The Congressional Committee investigating the White House's use of RNC e-mail addresses has issued an interim report that mostly confirms what was already known -- but does so with some pretty harsh detail. The highlights:

1. The White House originally said only a "handful of officials" had RNC accounts. The actual number was 88.

2. The accounts were used heavily, including for official government business -- in violation of the administration's own directives for complying with the Presidential Records Act.

3. A huge share of the e-mails have been destroyed. There are no surviving records for 51 of the 88 users, and for many of the rest there are no preserved messages from before Fall 2006.

4. Then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales knew about the use of the RNC accounts but took no steps to ensure the e-mails were preserved in accordance with the Presidential Records Act.

The committee next plans to retrieve e-mail records from federal agencies to see if they contain any of the missing e-mails; grill Gonzales about what he knew and what he did about it; and pursue a parallel investigation into the use of Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign e-mail accounts by White House officials.

Whether through incompetence or design, the White House appears to have massively violated the records act, destroying a treasure trove of internal communications that should have been preserved and made available to historians. Whether it's something more sinister than that remains to be seen, and may never be known one way or the other. But the committee's plan of action seems reasonable: recover the records if possible and see if other records have been lost through the similar arrangement with the Bush campaign. And grill Alberto Gonzales about yet another massive failure on his watch.

The only caveat is the same one I made a couple of months ago: This should not be allowed to devolve into a fishing expedition. Determining the extent, scope and reasons behind the problem (as well as repairing the damage as much as possible) is reasonable; going on a random tromp through Republican strategic communications is not.

RNC, Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Bush stonewalls, then blames Democrats

I've become a big fan of Dan Froomkin.

President Bush last month complained that the congressional probes into the firings of nine U.S. attorneys were being "drug out . . . for political reasons." White House spokesman Tony Snow yesterday dismissed the issuance of congressional subpoenas to two former White House aides as an attempt to "create some media drama."

But if anyone is to blame for the dragging out of the probes and the drama, it's Bush himself. He and his aides have consistently refused to tell the American people why those federal prosecutors were fired....

If Bush wants this media drama to go away -- and if there is, in fact, an innocent explanation for the firings -- then it's in his best interest to come clean, in public, and sooner rather than later. Why wait for a congressional hearing?

The stonewalling looks like it will have another effect, too -- provoking a constitutional confrontation between the White House and Congress over Congress' ability to subpoena senior aides. This isn't a purely partisan faceoff -- Republican Arlen Specter, for instance, supports yesterday's subpoenas of Harriet Miers and Sara Taylor. If neither side backs down, the validity of those subpoenas could be decided in court.

Meanwhile, Slate is retiring its Gonzometer, conceding Alberto Gonzales' remarkable staying power despite revelations such as these:

Not much good is happening inside the Justice Department, either. Monday's Washington Post revealed that, thanks to Gonzales and Co., a shocking number of the nation's newest immigration judges are a bunch of GOP hacks. Yesterday, Bradley Schlozman, the former U.S. attorney for Kansas City who brought voter-fraud indictments against a liberal group just four days before the November 2006 election, in violation of department policy, wrote to Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt., to "clarify" that when he testified 10 times last week that he had been "directed" to bring such indictments by the Election Crimes Branch of the DoJ's Public Integrity Section, he really meant that in fact he had never been directed to do so at all.

The immigration judge story is yet another example of the extent to which the Bush administration has politicized the functioning of the executive branch, in defiance of both tradition and (in some cases) the law.

The Schlozman embarrassment is also just another in a long line of instances where Justice officials (led by Gonzales) said one thing under oath, only to say the opposite later on.

And that doesn't even count the internal Justice Department probe into whether Gonzales tried to influence Monica Goodling's testimony about the prosecutor firings.

The prize for Gonzales' and Bush's steadfastness: continued embarassing revelations, destruction of Bush's political relevance and a dysfunctional Justice Department. Yay team!!

Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Gonzales no-confidence vote set for Monday

Darn it! I'm going to miss this one:

The Senate will hold a politically-charged vote Monday related to a no-confidence resolution in the embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

This being the Senate, the Monday vote is actually a vote on whether to hold a no-confidence vote. So assuming it passes, maybe I'll be back in the saddle in time for the actual vote.

Republican leaders are criticizing the vote as politically motivated (well, no kidding). It's something of a no-win for them. A vote against Gonzales would embarass the White House; a vote for him exposes them to the political ramifications of being on record supporting Gonzales amid various unfolding controversies over his performance.

But it still ought to proceed. If a majority of senators have no confidence in Gonzales, that should be made apparent, in as forceful a way as possible. Nothing else is likely to get through Bush's stubborness and make him realize that Gonzales is a liability, not an asset.

Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Berger, assault and earmarks

Ethics-related stories are just tumbling out today, so rather than give each a separate post I'll round them up here.

SANDY BERGER
Sandy Berger accepted disbarment yesterday, giving up his license to practice law after stealing classified documents from the National Archives. Doing so means he doesn't have to answer further questions about his actions there, which undoubtedly will fuel further speculation about what he might have stolen.


STATEHOUSE FISTICUFFS
A Republican lawmaker in Alabama, Sen. Charles Bishop, punched another senator in the head yesterday. He said he was provoked when Sen. Lowell Barron called him a "son of a bitch." "I responded to his comment with my right hand," Bishop said. While expressing regret, he has so far declined to apologize.

Barron denies he said it, and claims it was Bishop who swore at him. His version has some credence, because everyone agrees that the confrontation came during a time when Republicans were angry at Democrats for blocking a Republican bill, and it was Bishop who approached Barron, not the other way around.

Makes you wonder if Bishop was channeling the U.S. Congress in 1856, when a Democrat, Preston Brooks, nearly beat Republican Charles Sumner to death with a cane. Though if so Bishop should probably be very cautious, because while Sumner eventually recovered and enjoyed a long career in Congress, Brooks died a year later of the croup.

In any event, perhaps criminal assault is not the best way to express opinions in the Senate chamber.

Update: We've got video!

SHINING A LIGHT ON EARMARKS
Finally, the Hill details the earmark requests of members of the House Armed Services Committee, and compares it with campaign contribution records. Turns out earmarks are a bipartisan smorgasbord. But the implication of wrongdoing is a bit off, in my opinion. There's no indication that the earmarks were tit-for-tat favors, and it's to be expected that members would seek help for large employers in their district, while large employers will naturally have more employees contributing to a given candidate's campaign.

The main thing this story does is serve as a test: will sunlight actually discourage earmarks? I guess we'll find out.

Berger, earmarks, ethics, politics, midtopia

Another Abramoff plea

When Democrat William Jefferson was indicted on bribery charges earlier this week, it gave the GOP a welcome respite from coverage of their own ethics problems.

But now the honeymoon is over.

Italia Federici, an ally of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, pleaded guilty Friday to tax evasion and obstructing a Senate investigation into the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.

Federici's plea was part of a deal with the Justice Department that two people close to the case said could lead investigators to officials in Congress and the Bush administration.

Federici served as a go-between for Abramoff, who currently is in prison, and J. Steven Griles, a deputy Interior secretary who also has pleaded guilty to lying to Senate investigators.

She also embezzled money from a lobbying group she co-founded -- the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy -- and didn't bother to pay income taxes for three years. Sounds like a real charmer.

Her testimony could implicate Democrats as well as Republicans, of course. But the odds don't favor the Republicans. Besides her distinctly Republican ties, the GOP was the majority party at the time, and lobbyists would naturally have directed most of their efforts -- and bribes, if that was their modus operandi -- at Republicans. So expect this to lead to yet another crop of really bad headlines for Republicans.

Federici, Abramoff, corruption, politics, midtopia

Jefferson pleads not guilty

No big surprise here:

Rep. William Jefferson pleaded not guilty Friday to charges of soliciting more than $500,000 in bribes while using his office to broker business deals in Africa.

Jefferson, D-La., said he understood the charges during the federal court hearing. He was released on $100,000 bond.

This might indicate he doesn't plan to resign, but it doesn't preclude the possibility. Several Republicans initially refused to resign, only to change their mind as they witnessed the political damage to their party, the unlikelihood of their re-election, their diminished political power, and the difficulty in handling the business of Congress while dealing with a criminal investigation.

The real bad news is that his trial isn't scheduled to begin until January. So unless he resigns we've got another six months worth of "Jefferson still in Congress" to look forward to.

Update: Jefferson says the money in his freezer was part of an "http://www.myfoxkc.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=3437146&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.3.1">FBI sting operation. This leaves me a bit confused. Let's say he claims he was cooperating with the FBI. In that case we're supposed to believe they gave him the money, then raided his home and arrested him for having it. And if he wasn't cooperating, why did he take the $90,000 and hide it in his freezer?

If Jefferson's lawyer is worth any money at all, he'll tell Jefferson to shut up about the case from now on. Though I hope Jefferson ignores the advice.

Jefferson, politics, midtopia

The J-Bomb

The indictment of William Jefferson appears to have set off an explosion of activity in Congress, most of it aimed at reviving the moribund Ethics Committee.

The House quickly approved a Democratic motion that makes an ethics investigation mandatory when a member is indicted, then okayed a Republican motion to refer Jefferson's case to the committee to see if he should be expelled.

The vote was overwhelming on the Democratic motion: 387-10, with 15 members voting "present" and 20 not voting. Of the 25 voting either "nay" or "present", 16 were Democrats and nine were Republicans.

Of the 43 members of the Congressional Black Caucus, by the way, only Lacy Clay and John Conyers voted "nay", while three voted "present" and five didn't vote (including Jefferson).

The vote on the Republican motion was only a little closer: 373-26, with 13 "present" and the same 20 members not voting. 13 members of the CBC voted "nay"; three voted "present" and the same five didn't vote.

One of the CBC members voting "present" in both cases was Stephanie Tubbs Jones, the chairwoman of the ethics committee. She and other members of the committee mostly recused themselves from both votes.

So despite concerns that the CBC would try to protect Jefferson, a strong majority of the caucus supported both measures.

As I've said before, the Republican effort is premature, driven as it is by the idea that a simple indictment should lead to expulsion. But the motion merely asks the ethics panel to examine the case and decide if Jefferson should be expelled, so it's not a big problem as is. I imagine the panel will decide "no" unless truly damning evidence emerges against Jefferson in the meantime.

ALLOWING OUTSIDE COMPLAINTS
Separately -- and to more resistance -- the Democratic leadership is pushing a rules change that would let outsiders file ethics complaints against members. Currently only members can file complaints.

That particular rule, by the way, was introduced by the Republican-led House in 1997 after Speaker Newt Gingrich was slapped with a $300,000 fine (to be fair, Democrats supported it, too). It was accompanied by an unwritten "ethics truce" that produced a truly notable result: Only two ethics complaints have been filed in the last 10 years, the most recent in 2004, when Rep. Chris Bell, D-Texas, broke the truce by filing a complaint against Tom DeLay (the other was filed by former Rep. Bob Barr in 2001).

The proposal -- which has not yet been presented to Republicans -- has some House members worried about being inundated by a wave of politically motivated complaints. That's a legitimate concern, but it ignores the Senate, where outsiders are allowed to file complaints without notable hardship for senators. A simple screening process would help weed out frivolous complaints from genuine ones.

CALLS FOR RESIGNATION
Meanwhile, The New Orleans Times-Picayune has called on Jefferson to resign, as have some freshmen Democrats. And a judge froze Jefferson's assets to prevent him from spending or hiding potentially illicit gains.

THE MONEY PROBLEM
If Jefferson truly is innocent, he should stick it out. But if he's guilty -- as seems very likely -- he should resign and spare himself and his party the embarassment. Trouble is, he's not a wealthy man: he may be in a situation where he needs his Congressional salary in order to pay the bills as well as expected legal fees. That doesn't affect the moral dimension, of course, but it may present him with a practical dilemma.

ethics, Jefferson, politics, midtopia

Democrats do the pork-weasel dance

This is astonishing, both for the brazenness of the tactic and the amount of power David Obey has arrogated to himself:

Democrats are sidestepping rules approved their first day in power in January to clearly identify "earmarks" — lawmakers' requests for specific projects and contracts for their states — in documents that accompany spending bills.

Rather than including specific pet projects, grants and contracts in legislation as it is being written, Democrats are following an order by the House Appropriations Committee chairman to keep the bills free of such earmarks until it is too late for critics to effectively challenge them.

Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., says those requests for dams, community grants and research contracts for favored universities or hospitals will be added spending measures in the fall. That is when House and Senate negotiators assemble final bills to send to President Bush.

Obey says the problem is that there are too many earmark requests, and he doesn't want scrutiny of them holding up the larger bills. Fair enough: 36,000 earmark requests is a lot to slog through.

But not only does his edict directly violate recently adopted rules on earmark disclosure, it sets him up to be the sole watchdog on earmarks. And the side effect (whole point?) of the exercise -- not leaving enough time for the earmarks to be publicy scrutinized -- makes the proposal simply unacceptable.

Just a suggestion here, David, but perhaps the solution to being inundated with earmark requests is for the leadership to put a limit on them -- say, four per legislator per session. That would immediately cut such requests to fewer than 2,000 and force legislators to prioritize them.

In the irony department, several Democrats over in the Senate oppose Obey's power grab, among them the King of Pork himself, Robert Byrd. His reasons are not particularly laudable -- he's mad that he won't find out until the fall which of his pet projects will be funded -- but they suggest that Obey's edict may not survive for very long for reasons that have little to do with ethics.

Tangentially, Robert Novak notes that it's not like Republicans are particularly virtuous on the matter, either. But that doesn't in any way excuse the Democrats, because as the majority party they bear the most responsibility for following their own rules.

The Democrats have to start following the spirit as well as the letter of those rules. Earmarks should be debated when bills are considered, just like Democrats promised. If that is a burden, then cap the number and dollar value of earmarks allowed -- preferably at very low levels.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again: if the Democratic victory signaled a mandate for anything, it was ethics reform. If they want to keep their majority in 2008, they must follow through on that. Overall they've done a pretty decent job. But stories like this demonstrate why constant vigilance is necessary, lest they slipside back into their bad old habits when they think nobody is looking.

Clean it up, guys. Write clear, strict rules and abide by them. Otherwise every charge of "hypocrisy" is justified.


Obey, ethics, politics, midtopia

Jefferson follow-up

While some observers see the Jefferson indictment as possibly leading to a wider rift between Nancy Pelosi and the Black Caucus, at least the Caucus is doing the neutral thing regarding Jefferson:

Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.), a veteran caucus member, said it would be "as supportive of our colleague as possible, in terms of saying a person in America is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty."

Exactly what I expected, but didn't dare hope for.

While the Caucus would be crazy to go to the mat for Jefferson, they do have a point about a double standard:

The black caucus accused Pelosi of a racially tinged double standard. As she was moving against Jefferson, she allowed Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (D-W.Va.), who is white, to remain on the Appropriations Committee despite dealing with his own federal investigation. Mollohan, now chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that funds the departments of Commerce and Justice, did recuse himself in issues involving federal law enforcement.

The difference, such as it is, is that the case (and known evidence) against Mollohan is nowhere near as lurid or eye-popping as that against Jefferson. But that's a pretty small difference. The more relevant distinction might be that Mollohan is a far more powerful legislator than Jefferson.

Regardless, Mollohan has no business retaining his seat on the subcommittee overseeing the Justice Department, and arguably ought to step down from the Appropriations Committee in general. Letting him stay there is a far more egregious black eye for Democrats than letting due process take its time with Jefferson.

Update: Jefferson meekly gave up his seat on the Small Business Committee, sparing himself and committee members the embarassment of an expulsion vote. And Republicans are pushing to have Jefferson expelled from Congress -- an ethical standard I criticized as extreme in yesterday's post. Pelosi, meanwhile, is expected to quickly name 10 Democrats to a pool used to form investigative subcommittees of the Ethics Committee, a necessary prelude to an Ethics investigation of Jefferson.

Let me repeat: establishing expulsion-on-indictment as a standard for membership in Congress would be a very, very bad idea. It would be bad for individual rights, bad for representative democracy and encourage politically motivated investigations of Congress members. Republicans need to stop the irresponsible grandstanding. Isolate Jefferson? Fine. Kick him out before he's had a trial? No.

Black Caucus, Mollohan, Jefferson, politics, midtopia

Jefferson indicted -- finally

I was getting tired of waiting for this.

Louisiana congressman William Jefferson received more than $500,000 in bribes and sought millions more in nearly a dozen separate schemes to enrich himself by using his office to broker business deals in Africa, according to a federal indictment Monday.

The charges came almost two years after investigators raided Jefferson's home in Washington and found $90,000 in cash stuffed in his freezer.

The indictment lists 16 counts, including racketeering, soliciting bribes, wire fraud, money laundering, obstruction of justice and conspiracy. He faces a possible maximum sentence of 235 years.

At least now we know why an indictment took so long: the case was complicated and extensive, with front companies, international contacts and the like.

I have to point out that charges do not equal guilt, and Jefferson vehemently maintains his innocence. But IMO the evidence against him is pretty overwhelming. Not to mention the two associates that have already pleaded guilty to handling bribes -- and fingered Jefferson in the process.

Now that he's actually been indicted, Democrats can punish him more completely. After the FBI raids he lost his seat on the powerful Ways and Means committee; now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to move quickly to take away his one remaining committee seat, on the Small Business Committee. At that point he would essentially be powerless and irrelevant. If and when he is convicted, he would almost certainly be expelled from Congress.

Repellently gleeful noises from certain quarters aside, there is probably nobody happier than Congressional Democrats that indictments have finally surfaced. For months they were saddled with Jefferson's "we all know he's guilty" presence, while being unable to do anything about it. But now they can actually do something to say "we don't condone this."

That said, I'm very interested to see what the Congressional Black Caucus -- the group that gave Jefferson a standing ovation after he was re-elected -- will say. They'll probably just raise the "innocent until proven guilty" trope to avoid either supporting or condemning him. But it's something of a sad commentary that I'm not confident of that.

Finally, let's cross into partisanland and examine the ridiculous standards writers like Mark at Red State think should be applied here.

It’s early in the life of this latest political scandal, but thus far, the silence from Capitol Hill has been deafening.

Um, no on all counts. This isn't the "latest political scandal"; it's a year old. And what silence is he talking about? Pelosi immediately called a press conference to denounce the behavior described in the indictments.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi boldly promised to run the “most open and ethical Congress” in the nation’s history.

I think what really bugs partisan Republicans is that even if Pelosi falls short of that standard, she'll still do better than the most recent Republican-led Congress.

The numbers aren’t in yet, but if a Congress can be judged on the length of time it takes from its installation to the first indictment of a member of the controlling party, than this Congress must have set a new record.

More partisan irrelevance; "length of time from installation to first indictment" is a stupid standard to apply, especially for a scandal that is a year old.

Mark goes on to make some good points about the sluggish operation of the Ethics Committee. But then he launches this whopper.

Pelosi has had her head firmly planted in the sand over Jefferson from the very beginning of the investigation. He was allowed to stand for re-election in November despite being under Federal investigation. He was allowed to keep his seat on the powerful tax law writing House Ways and Means committee in the last Congress, despite being under investigation for accepting bribes. And he was seated by this Congress in January, despite the ongoing investigation.

Let's just list the fatuous nonsense and outright falsehoods.

1. Apparently Pelosi is supposed to decide who can run for office and who can't.

2. Jefferson lost his seat on Ways and Means back in June 2006.

3. The House apparently was supposed to prevent the democratically elected Jefferson from being seated, even though he had not been charged with any wrongdoing.

Note that the standard being applied here is that merely being suspected of wrongdoing should be enough to get you expelled from Congress.

Let's be clear: I think Jefferson is guilty as hell. But we do have this legal thing called "innocent until proven guilty." Further, while the House has the right to decide who it will seat and who it won't, there should be a very high standard for nullifying the will of the voters.

Historically, that has meant resignation from leadership and important positions upon investigation, suspension of nearly all privileges upon indictment and resignation (or expulsion) upon conviction.

And indeed, that's exactly how it played out in the cases of Randy "Duke" Cunningham and Bob Ney, Republicans who resigned soon after cutting plea deals with prosecutors.

Ney, for instance, resigned from the House Administration Committee after he became a target of an investigation related to Jack Abramoff. But he stood for re-election and won the primary race in May, only withdrawing from the general election in August after it became clear he might lose. In September he said he would plead guilty to federal charges, something he actually did in mid-October. But he didn't actually resign until Nov. 3.

According to Red State's brain-dead standard, Republicans should have kicked Ney out of Congress at the beginning of 2006. Instead they let him remain for 11 months more.

I agree that the Ethics Committee should get its butt in gear and start justifying its existence. But beyond that, the thing to recognize and accept is that these sorts of cases take time and follow a predictable arc. Jefferson will eventually get what's coming to him. And while it would be satisfying for the hand of justice to take him down tomorrow, justice is supposed to be both swift and sure. And "sure" takes time if you care at all about individual rights and respecting the will of the people.

Investigation, indictment, trial, sentencing. We've reached the second step, with the third step just around the corner. Assuming the Feds have a solid case -- and I think they do -- step four isn't too far off.

corruption, William Jefferson, politics, midtopia

More obsessive administration secrecy

First we had the White House declaring that its visitor logs were classified. Now, in yet another example of the "none of your damn business" school of government, it turns out the vice president has done the same.

A lawyer for Vice President Dick Cheney told the Secret Service in September to eliminate data on who visited Cheney at his official residence, a newly disclosed letter states. The Sept. 13, 2006, letter from Cheney's lawyer says logs for Cheney's residence on the grounds of the Naval Observatory are subject to the Presidential Records Act.

Such a designation prevents the public from learning who visited the vice president.

Note that there is no high-minded principle involved here. The White House classified its logs to keep people from finding out how many times Jack Abramoff had visited. Cheney classified his logs to keep people from finding out how often he was visiting with leaders of the religious right.

The records are preserved and go into the presidential records of the Bush administration. But other Bush orders (facilitated by none other than Alberto Gonzales) give administrations the right to keep documents out of public view forever.

It's time for Congress to address such government records clearly and directly, spelling out that they are public documents that can only be withheld for certain narrow reasons -- and avoiding embarassment or the judgement of history are not among them.

secrecy, politics, midtopia

House bites bullet, does the right thing

In the several days late department: Thanks to pressure from Democratic freshmen, the House finally passed its ethics legislation on Thursday, overcoming earlier objections from some senior members.

The new proposals, which in the end passed overwhelmingly, would expand the information available about how business is done on Capitol Hill and make it available online. They would provide expanded, more frequent and Internet-accessible reporting of lobbyist-paid contributions and sponsorships, and would for the first time impose prison terms for criminal rule-breakers. They would also require strict new disclosure of "bundled" campaign contributions that lobbyists collect and pass on to lawmakers' campaigns. Yesterday's legislation passed 396 to 22.

The bundling provision was a big stumbling block, and perhaps the measure's most important aspect. But Democrats jettisoned several other provisions, including a two-year wait before legislators can become lobbyists (the wait currently is one year).

But all in all, the bill greatly improves transparency about money and access, which is the key to any sort of serious reform.

Now that the House and Senate have finally passed their respective ethics measures, they have to reconcile them in conference committee. The next thing to watch for is what gets kept and what gets tossed during those negotiations. Once the final bill emerges and passes, we'll be able to judge precisely how the Democrats fared on this central campaign promise.

ethics, <politics, midtopia

Heffelfinger blows a gasket

You knew it was coming. Minnesota's former U.S. attorney Tom Heffelfinger -- who resigned while, unbeknownst to him, he was on a list of those that the administration was considering firing -- fired back Thursday after weeks of semisilence.

Heffelfinger, who says he had no idea anyone in Washington was thinking of firing him when he resigned his position as U.S. attorney in February 2006, has gradually become more open about his outrage over the controversy around the firing of U.S. attorneys as his name has been more publicly linked to it.

In remarks to the Bar Association in Minneapolis, he reached a new peak, saying among other things that "something is fundamentally broken within the Department of Justice."

And he read aloud from an e-mail, written by Kyle Sampson, then-chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, to other Justice Department officials under pressure to explain how particular U.S. attorneys had become candidates for dismissal.

Sampson suggested the attorneys on the list -- including Heffelfinger -- "had no federal prosecution experience when they took the job."

This elicited a burst of shocked laughter from the audience, many of whom knew Heffelfinger had been a Hennepin County prosecutor, a federal prosecutor, and had served a previous term as U.S. attorney for Minnesota under the first President Bush before the second President Bush appointed him in 2001.

It's not encouraging that the people in charge of firing decisions were so unaware of his record. It's like it was Amateur Hour in the Justice Department executive offices.

Heffelfinger, Goodling, Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Goodling fallout

Following up on my original post, a couple of items from Monica Goodling's testimony on Wednesday appear destined to cause Alberto Gonzales further trouble.

First, Goodling said that Gonzales talked to her about the prosecutor case.

"It made me a little uncomfortable," Monica Goodling, Gonzales' former White House liaison, said of her conversation with the attorney general just before she took a leave of absence in March. "I just did not know if it was appropriate for us to both be discussing our recollections of what had happened."

Trouble is, Gonzales told Congress that he didn't.

Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee last month that he didn't know the answers to some questions about the firings because he was steering clear of aides — such as Goodling — who were likely to be questioned.

"I haven't talked to witnesses because of the fact that I haven't wanted to interfere with this investigation and department investigations," Gonzales told the panel.

Hmmm....

Perhaps we should give Gonzales the benefit of the doubt on this one and accept the Justice Department explanation: "The attorney general has never attempted to influence or shape the testimony or public statements of any witness in this matter, including Ms. Goodling," said spokesman Brian Roehrkasse. "The statements made by the attorney general during this meeting were intended only to comfort her in a very difficult period of her life."

All well and good, although that's sort of an odd way to comfort someone. And perhaps he shouldn't lie to Congress about it afterward. And then there's the troubling little fact that he has done this repeatedly: Made a claim, been contradicted by the facts, then backpedaled. Once might be forgiven; but three or four times?

Secondly, the Justice Department is broadening its inquiry into Goodling's hiring practices based on her testimony.

The expanded inquiry, conducted by the department's inspector general and its Office of Professional Responsibility, comes after testimony Wednesday by former Gonzales aide Monica M. Goodling.

She told a House committee that she had considered party affiliation in screening applicants to become immigration judges.

Judges on top of career prosecutors. Lovely. But why is this a big deal? We already knew that she admitted "crossing the line."

The difference here is that Goodling says she was authorized to do so in this case.

She cited a conversation she had with another Gonzales aide, D. Kyle Sampson, who said the department's Office of Legal Counsel had declared the practice to be lawful.

The Justice Department denies it.

Justice Department officials said no such opinion existed.

They also denied Goodling's assertion that the hiring of immigration judges had been frozen after the department's civil division raised concerns about using a political litmus test.

We now get to play the "somebody's lying" game. Goodling claims she properly briefed James McNulty before his misleading Congressional testimony; he heatedly denies it.

Now she claims she had authorization to use political criteria in hiring; Justice denies it. In that case they could both be telling the truth, but only if Sampson was either lying or grossly mistaken.

Either way, expect more embarassing headlines for Gonzales.

Goodling, Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Goodling testifies

Monica Goodling is testifying before the Senate about the prosecutor firings, and so far the only really interesting stuff involves herself, Kyle Sampson and former deputy AG Paul McNulty.

The Justice Department's former White House liaison ... blamed Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty for misleading Congress about the dismissals.

McNulty's explanation, on Feb. 6, "was incomplete or inaccurate in a number of respects," Monica Goodling told a packed House Judiciary Committee inquiry into the firings.

She added: "I believe the deputy was not fully candid."

She also said the list of those to be fired was compiled by Kyle Sampson. It's not clear if that's a contradiction of Alberto Gonzales' recent statement that McNulty was the driving force behind the firings (notwithstanding his even earlier statement that McNulty wasn't really involved). It doesn't have to be: Sampson is generally acknowledged as having been the keeper of the list, even if he wasn't making all the decisions about who should be on it.

As to herself, she denied playing a major role in the firings but admitted she broke the law when she used politics as a criteria for hiring career prosecutors.

She said she never spoke to former White House counsel Harriet Miers or Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, about the firings. But she admitted to have considered applicants for jobs as career prosecutors based on their political loyalties — 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."

Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., hammered Goodling on her decisions to hire prosecutors who favored Republicans.

"Do you believe they were illegal or legal?" Scott asked.

"I don't believe I intended to commit a crime," Goodling, a lawyer, answered.

"Did you break the law? Is it against the law to take those considerations into account?" Scott said.

"I believe I crossed the line, but I didn't mean to," she responded.

More as it develops.

Meanwhile, some prosecutors have detailed the political interference Goodling introduced into the hiring of career prosecutors.

When Jeffrey A. Taylor, interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, wanted to hire a new career prosecutor last fall, he had to run the idea past Monica M. Goodling, then a 33-year-old aide to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales.

The candidate was Seth Adam Meinero, a Howard University law school graduate who had worked on civil rights cases at the Environmental Protection Agency and had served as a special assistant prosecutor in Taylor's office.

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

The article also appears to dispute her contention that she wasn't heavily involved in the prosecutor brouhaha.

First, she was Justice's White House liaison. It stretches credibility to suggest that the firings would not have been coordinated with the White House through her.

Second, it notes that she played a central role in the appointment of Rove protege Tim Griffin, met with legislators who complained about David Iglesias and blocked the dismissal of a North Carolina prosecutor.

And then there was this:

Before she and Sampson resigned, Goodling wrote a series of memos summing up the longtime U.S. attorneys she helped to fire. She said that Iglesias was "in over his head," that Carol C. Lam of San Diego showed "a failure to perform" and that Arizona's Paul K. Charlton was guilty of "repeated instances of insubordination."

Yet Goodling's final list, assembled as "talking points" for Congress and the media, also noted that nearly every fired prosecutor had received stellar reviews from Justice Department evaluators.

Now perhaps that was part of her job as Justice Department counsel. But it sure doesn't sound like the actions of someone who wasn't up to her eyeballs in the process.

Update: From the LA Times, yet another example of how Goodling's fingerprints are all over the U.S. attorneys -- this time bypassing a state panel in the search for a new prosecutor in Los Angeles.

Goodling, politics, midtopia

Busy day tomorrow

Wednesday should have a lot of fireworks, thanks to several big items all landing at the same time:

Looking for Ms. Goodling
An immunized Monica Goodling testifies before the Senate about the prosecutor firings. Source have indicated her testimony won't implicate Alberto Gonzales, but then that's what they said about Kyle Sampson -- and his testimony turned out to be another body blow for the embattled AG.

The problem is that, based on what we already know, Gonzales is either mendacious or incompetent. Goodling's testimony can only show one of three things: that Gonzales was more involved than he has admitted, which means he lied to Congress; that Gonzales was totally uninvolved, which indicts his management ability; and/or that the firings were indeed heavily political, which discredits both his judgement and his truthfulness.

War funding
The newest version of the war-funding bill could hit the floor of Congress, with the possibility that the most antiwar Democrats ultimately will vote against it now that the timetables have been stripped out. There still should be enough votes to pass it (with Republican support), but it raises all sorts of tantalizing possibilities.

One is merely theoretical: contemplate what would happen if the war funding didn't have enough Democratic votes to pass without timetables, and didn't have enough Republican votes to pass with them. What would happen?

The other is more concrete: in order to govern, will Pelosi and Reid find themselves increasingly making common cause with Republicans against the more extreme elements of their own party? And will that work, or simply lead to a fracture in the Democratic ranks?

And consider what a Democratic fracture might mean. With the Republicans themselves fractured (united only by the need to stay relevant by thwarting Democratic moves), Congress could find itself in an unstable situation, where each party's leadership is less relevant and instead ad hoc groups of legislators coalesce around individual issues.

That's not going to happen, of course, at least not to a large degree. Party connections are too ingrained, too convenient, too powerful. And the leadership controls the movement of legislation, so they'll never get too irrelevant (though there was a time when committee chairmen were highly independent and arguably more powerful than the Speaker and her deputies). Still, if two fractured parties mean more individual initiative by Congress members, that would be all to the good in my book.

Anyway, tomorrow should be a fascinating day.

Iraq, Goodling, politics, midtopia

Report: GSA head violated Hatch Act

When last we left Lurita Doan, she was being investigated for (among other things) using her office for improper political purposes, in violation of the Hatch Act.

Now the investigation is over. It's conclusion? She broke the law.

An Office of Special Counsel report has found that General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan violated the Hatch Act, which bars federal officials from partisan political activity while on the job, sources say.

The report addresses a Jan. 26 lunch meeting at GSA headquarters attended by Doan and about 40 political appointees, some of whom participated by videoconference. During the meeting, Scott Jennings, the White House deputy director of political affairs, gave a PowerPoint presentation that included slides listing Democratic and Republican seats the White House viewed as vulnerable in 2008, a map of contested Senate seats and other information on 2008 election strategy.

According to meeting participants, Doan asked after the call how GSA could help “our candidates.”

Now for the bad news:

After Doan responds, the report will be sent to President Bush with recommendations that could include suspension or termination. The president is not required to comply with the suggestions.

Yes, you read that right: punishment is entirely up to the president. This is the Bush administration, so I suppose it's quite possible she won't suffer any adverse effects. But I just can't bring myself to be that cynical. Look for her to resign or be fired sometime in June.

Lurita Doan, politics, midtopia