Ripping RedState

This is fun: Dyre Portents tears Red State a new one for mocking a bill they don't understand.

Good times.

politics, midtopia

Leahy subpoenas Rove e-mails

Things are heating up in the "executive privilege" confrontation between Congress and the White House.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) issued a subpoena Wednesday for all e-mails from White House adviser Karl Rove that relate to the firings of eight U.S. attorneys.

The subpoena is actually aimed at the Justice Department, not Rove, so it only covers communications he would have had with Justice. It'll be interesting to see if that gets around privilege objections, since communications with other departments don't usually count as confidential advice to the president.

He gave the Justice Department until May 15 to comply.

Meanwhile, Gonzales is scheduled to go before the House Judiciary Committee on May 10 and get the same grilling he got from the Senate a couple of weeks ago. His appearance will come amid a Justice Department probe of Monica "I plead the Fifth" Goodling, this time examining whether she sought to place Republicans in career prosecutor spots -- a violation of both tradition and civil-service law.

Much as the White House may not savor the prospect of replacing Gonzales, can that experience really be worse that the endless drumbeat of bad news they're going to endure if they keep him?

Goodling, Gonzales, politics, midtopia

McDermott loses again

Rep. James McDermott lost another round in the legal battle over his leaking an illegally obtained tape of GOP leaders 10 years ago.

In a 5-4 opinion, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that McDermott, D-Seattle, should not have given reporters access to the taped call....

The ruling upholds a previous decision ordering McDermott to pay House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, more than $700,000 for leaking the taped conversation. The figure includes $60,000 in damages and more than $600,000 in legal costs.

McDermott claims there are serious whistleblower and First Amendment issues at stake here, and I'm sympathetic to that -- as are 18 news organizations that filed briefs supporting him. We do not want to overly restrict the ability of people to expose government wrongdoing -- as the revelations of NSA eavesdropping, CIA prisons and FBI abuse of National Security Letters attest.

But whistleblower exceptions generally involve matters of great public interest. This leak, besides being based on an illegally obtained tape, involved little more than partisan advantage -- an effort to embarass Congressional Republicans and Newt Gingrich in particular. While they deserved to be embarassed -- talking about ethics in public while conniving in private is never pretty -- such petty score-settling isn't worthy of the same protection as a government worker exposing crimes and corruption.

In this case, it's hard to see how the public interest could trump the legalities of the matter.

So good for the court, and let's hope the Supreme Court declines to hear the case and brings this saga to an end. A $700,000 payout appears to be a fitting punishment for what in the end was a relatively minor offense -- as evidenced by the awarding of just $60,000 in actual damages. Political embarassment is only worth so much.

Hall of Shame has been updated.

politics, midtopia

DeLay's PAC packs it in

Gradually, the last vestiges of Tom DeLay's presence in Congress are fading away.

The political action committee for former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) was quietly closed last week after a decade-long run as one of the most influential - and infamous - PACs run by members of Congress.

With a final $1,400 payment to the Federal Election Commission last month settling an audit dispute, Americans for a Republican Majority then filed its termination papers with the commission April 24.

Soon his Congressional committee will follow suit.

The last remnant of DeLay's political career in federal government, the Tom DeLay Congressional Committee, is just about completely empty as well, reporting just $7,015 left in its coffers as of March 31. DeLay spent almost $1 million last year from this committee defending himself. A separate legal defense fund, which folded when he left Congress, doled out an additional $1.1 million to DeLay lawyers in 2004, 2005 and 2006.

No need to start lamenting, though. He's got a blog, a book and continues to opine on politics, with a predictable take (Bush's only mistakes have been giving in. Rumsfeld shouldn't have been fired, for instance.) Those of us slightly less admiring of the Hammer (time once again to plug my hit song, "ConBoy") have his upcoming trial to look forward to -- assuming there's actually a case at the bottom of it.

I strongly hope that the rest of the body politic have taken note of the lessons of DeLay, and we shall not see his like again for a very long time.

DeLay, politics, midtopia

Julie Macdonald resigns

Another day, another partisan hack is forced to resign from the Bush administration.

Julie Macdonald, a deputy assistant secretary at the Department of the Interior, resigned a week before a House committee was scheduled to look into her handling of science and staffers at the agency, as well as whether she violated the Endangered Species Act.

It also came a month after she was rebuked in a report (pdf) by her agency's inspector general, which concluded she broke federal rules for leaking internal documents to private groups.

But the final straw may have been Sen. Ron Wyden, who was holding up another Interior Department nomination until action was taken on the IG's report.

All this without even getting into how entirely unqualified she was for the position, holding a civil engineering degree while doing a job that involved overseeing and editing Endangered Species research. She was a perfect example of the Bush approach to governance: value loyalty over competence, ideology over data, and hold no one accountable.

To illustrate those points, a few choice tidbits from the IG's report:

Her politicizing the science:

The Assistant Director for External Affairs [said] MacDonald would not accept the field [office's] scientific findings and would apply science from alternative outside sources [which she would label] as "the best science" and insist field employees revise their findings to fit what she wanted.

It further notes that her meddling took up scarce time ahead of court-appointed deadlines, producing rushed, legally indefensible rulings that mired the agency in constant (and losing) litigation.

It described her approach to listing species as endangered or threatened: she would only do so when sued by environmental groups.

It describes her combative, confrontational management style.

It describes her open door policy for favored lobbyists.

It describes her sending internal documents to outside groups, notably the Pacific Legal Foundation, which exists to challenge the Endangered Species Act:

The e-mail search revealed that MacDonald had sent an FWS document ... to a PLF attorney... the [document was] nonpublic information and classified as internal DOIIEWS documents. Jones stated that these documents were for "FWS eyes only" and should not have been disseminated outside of DOI.

She also sent internal documents to a variety of other sources, including ChevronTexaco and, more amusingly, her kid and a person she had met online.

MacDonald confirmed that she also sent the Delta Smelt document to an on-line game friend through his father's e-mail account. MacDonald said she is acquainted with the on-line friend through internet role-playing games. She said she engages in these games to relieve the stress created by her job; however, she said she has not played while at work. When asked why she would e-mail an internal DO1 document to a private citizen, MacDonald replied, "I was irritated [with what was
happening regarding the subject of the document] and tried to explain my irritation over the phone; however, I sent it to him to read for a better understanding."

MacDonald could offer no explanation as to why she sent her child an e-mail containing an internal DOI/FWS document other than she feels frustrated at times and likes to have third party reviews of these documents. MacDonald opined that she sent FWS documents to the on-line game friend and her child to have another set of eyes give an unfiltered opinion of them, negative comments included.

So according to MacDonald's own words, she was seeking policy feedback from what appear to be minors. Outstanding.

I don't think she'll be much missed.

Julie McDonald, politics, midtopia

The politicization of government

Last month, reports said the administrator of the General Services Administration was under investigation for possibly violating the Hatch ACt, which makes it illegal to use federal resources for partisan purposes.

Turns out that might have been the tip of the iceberg.

White House officials conducted 20 private briefings on Republican electoral prospects in the last midterm election for senior officials in at least 15 government agencies covered by federal restrictions on partisan political activity, a White House spokesman and other administration officials said yesterday.

The previously undisclosed briefings were part of what now appears to be a regular effort in which the White House sent senior political officials to brief top appointees in government agencies on which seats Republican candidates might win or lose, and how the election outcomes could affect the success of administration policies, the officials said.

Informational briefings? Fine. Pressure, encouragement or collusion to use their positions to try to influence the outcome of particular races? Illegal.
In a sign of the seriousness of the questions, the agencies' responses are being coordinated:

By the end of yesterday afternoon, all of those describing the briefings on the record had adopted a uniform phrase in response to a reporter's inquiries: They were, each official said, "informational briefings about the political landscape."

And then there's this adorable little slip-up:

At the Department of Homeland Security, spokesman Russ Knocke at first said "there is no indication that any meeting on election targets, congressional districts or candidate support or assistance took place at the department." He then called back to alter that remark, saying he had no indication that such a meeting was held at department "offices." A department official said employees were briefed on "morale" but did not elaborate.

Translation: "We did talk about political use of government agencies, we just did it out of the office."

For now these are just another set of questions regarding the Bush administration's politicization of government functions. But they are credible questions deserving answers.

And regardless of what those answers turn out to be, this provides an excellent example of why such politicization is a bad idea. While the president and Congress set policy, the American people have to trust that government is working for everyone, regardless of political party. At a minimum, revelations like this call that trust into question, which in turn erodes faith in government and undermines government's legitimacy. A certain amount of political influence is unavoidable and even desirable: after all, you don't want unelected mandarins ignoring the wishes of our elected representatives. But once appointed their job is to serve the people. It's a lesson that was lost on Alberto Gonzales, and it appears he was not alone.

corruption, politics, midtopia

McCain calls for Gonzales to resign

The "throw him out" chorus keeps getting louder.

Presidential contender John McCain joined the growing number of Republicans calling for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to step down in the furor over the firings of eight federal prosecutors.

"I am very disappointed in his performance," McCain, R-Ariz., said Wednesday when asked about the attorney general in an interview with CNN's Larry King. "I think loyalty to the president should enter into his calculations."

When pressed about whether Gonzales should resign, McCain responded: "I think that out of loyalty to the president that that would probably be the best thing that he could do."

Translation: you're hurting your boss and the entire GOP, Al. Knock it off.

Things should be very interesting for Tony Snow when he returns to work next week.

McCain, Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Wednesday Gonzales roundup

Just when you thought things might die down a little in the Gonzales case and other Congressional probes, they heat back up.

By 21-10, the House oversight committee voted to issue a subpoena to Rice to compel her story on the Bush administration's claim, now discredited, that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa.

This strikes me as a little bit of rehashing old news, as Republicans were quick to point out. And obviously there's a political factor here -- the opportunity to embarass the administration by reminding voters how badly they got things wrong in Iraq. But a lot of these issues should have been investigated at the time, and weren't. I'd much rather see a probe into the aluminum tubes evidence, since that seems to be a much clearer example of spinning intelligence to justify a war; but this is an okay place to start.

Moments earlier in the committee chamber next door, the House Judiciary Committee voted 32-6 to grant immunity to Monica Goodling, Gonzales' White House liaison, for her testimony on why the administration fired eight federal prosecutors. The panel also unanimously approved — but did not issue — a subpoena to compel her to appear.

This was expected, and should be interesting. Goodling was heavily involved in the decision to fire the prosecutors, and may be able to shed light on who actually drew up the list and why -- a question that remains oddly unanswered, as if the list just magically appeared one night on Kyle Sampson's desk as a gift from the Pink Slip Fairy.

Simultaneously across Capitol Hill, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved — but did not issue — a subpoena on the prosecutors' matter to Sara Taylor, deputy to presidential adviser Karl Rove.

This will ratchet up the confrontation with the administration over executive privilege.

And then the topper:

And in case Gonzales thought the worst had passed with his punishing testimony last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the chairman and top Republican issued a new demand: Refresh the memory that Gonzales claimed had failed him 71 times during the seven-hour session.

"Provide the answers to the questions you could not recall last Thursday," Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and ranking Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, wrote to Gonzales on Wednesday.

The hot seat remains hot for Gonzales. They issued a similar request to Kyle Sampson, who outdid his boss by claiming "I don't know" 122 times. We'll see if anything comes of it. Either way it will continue to fuel the controversy -- either with the content of his answers, or the implications of his refusal to answer.

As if that weren't bad enough for Gonzales, there's this, from the Wall Street Journal. Turns out there was more to the recent FBI raid on Rep. Rick Renzi's house than there appeared:

As midterm elections approached last November, federal investigators in Arizona faced unexpected obstacles in getting needed Justice Department approvals to advance a corruption investigation of Republican Rep. Rick Renzi, people close to the case said.

The delays, which postponed key approvals in the case until after the election, raise new questions about whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales or other officials may have weighed political issues in some investigations. The Arizona U.S. attorney then overseeing the case, Paul Charlton, was told he was being fired in December, one of eight federal prosecutors dismissed in the past year. The dismissals have triggered a wave of criticism and calls from Congress for Mr. Gonzales to resign.

It's important to note that this is speculation at the moment; there's no evidence of wrongdoing. But the timing is interesting:

Mr. Renzi, first elected to Congress in 2002, was fighting to hold on to his seat. In September, President Bush hosted a fund-raiser in Scottsdale on his behalf. About the same time Mr. Charlton was added to a list of prosecutors "we should now consider pushing out," wrote Mr. Gonzales's then-chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, in a Sept. 13, 2006, email to then-White House counsel Harriet Miers. The email is among thousands that the Justice Department has released in response to congressional inquiries into the dismissal of the U.S. attorneys.

In November, Mr. Renzi won re-election to a third term, beating his challenger by 51% to 44%. A month later, on Dec. 7, Mr. Charlton was told he was being dismissed.

Why did they decide to add Renzi to the "to be fired" list at that point? Coincidence? Could be. And as Gonzales backers like to point out, it wasn't like this particular investigation was going to be derailed. But that wouldn't have been the point. It could have been intended to send a signal to other prosecutors who might consider investigation high-profile Republicans.

Certainly needs some explaining.

Iraq, Rice, Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Another Abramoff casualty

Mark Zachares, a former aide to Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, apparently is preparing to plead guilty to conspiracy charges.

In exchange for helping Abramoff get clients and business, Zachares was supposed to receive "credit" that would be applied when he landed a job at Abramoff's firm, Greenberg Traurig. (The plan never got that far.)

According to prosecutors, Zachares helped Abramoff get an advance copy of a Justice Department threat report on Guam. He also provided Abramoff information about the Department of Homeland Security reorganization and helped Abramoff develop strategies to win DHS business for clients. Zachares also advised Abramoff's Sun Cruz venture on bureaucratic regulations.

He was a loyalist to the core. In emails Zachares reiterated "his willingness to use his position to retaliate against individuals or entities who had retained competing lobbying firms," according to the filing.

His loyalty came with perks. Zachares accepted trips, money, meals drinks, golf and tickets to sporting events. Many people have taken sports tickets from Abramoff, but Zachares' tally hits high on the list: between August 2002 and February 2004 he racked up more than $30,000 worth of tickets on more than 40 occasions. He also traveled with Abramoff to Scotland in August 2003. And in January and February 2002 Zachares received two $5,000 payments from Abramoff through a wire transfer from the Capitol Athletic Foundation, one of Abramoff's nonprofits.

Added to the Hall of Shame.

Update: As expected, Zachares pleaded guilty. He's expected to get about two years in prison.

politics, midtopia

Life in the bubble

President Bush today reiterated his strong support for Alberto Gonzales.

The president said that Gonzales' testimony before skeptical Judiciary Committee senators last week "increased my confidence" in his ability to lead the Justice Department. Separately, a White House spokeswoman said, "He's staying."

Of course, he didn't actually listen to or watch that testimony. And the White House acknowledged that it wouldn't have mattered if he had.

Q. So is it fair to say that no matter what the testimony, no matter what the back-and-forth, that the President plans to stick with Attorney General Gonzales?

MS. PERINO: I think -- yes. I think the President has full confidence in the Attorney General and whenever that changes for any public servant, we'll let you know, and I see no indication of that.

That sound you hear is Bush sticking his fingers in his ears and going "Na-na-na-na-na. I can't hear you!" It doesn't bother me that he supports Gonzales. It bothers me that he is so obvious about his refusal to listen to things that may contradict his own viewpoint. Bush appears unable or unwilling to recognize two concepts:

1. There's a difference between "fierce loyalty" and "blind loyalty."

2. There's a difference between "loyal" and "competent."

Oh heck, let's add a third:

3. What's good for Bush is not always what's good for the government or the country.

His devotion to an incompetent lapdog AG is a prime example of all three. And it doesn't really achieve anything, because most of the rest of the GOP wants to be shut of the whole mess.

Rep. Adam Putnam, chairman of the House Republican Conference, called on Gonzales to step down -- echoing a position that a group of top House GOPers privately delivered to Bush earlier in the month. "He's done something I didn't think possible. He's lost the confidence of almost all the Republicans in Congress," said one top GOP strategist who is close to the White House.

This isn't a Dem-Rep thing; it's a Bush-vs.-everyone-else thing.

Update: Gonzales vows to stay on the job. Republicans everywhere shudder inwardly.

Bush, Gonzales, politics, midtopia

How'd Gonzales do?

I'm still strapped for time, so rather than do a lousy job of analyzing Gonzales' testimony, I'll point you to people who did it right.

The Moderate Voice has an excellent and lengthy piece on it, tying in a lot of commentary from around the blogosphere. His conclusion: Gonzales did not win any converts, and received many, many hints from Republicans that it was time for him to leave.

At best, the portrait that has emerged in recent weeks from a slew of news reports and his testimony yesterday suggest a weak individual who is easily politically dominated. At worst, the portrait that is emerging is of someone who an outright political hack and should never have been appointed at all. An unspoken sentiment among Republicans seems to be buyer’s remorse.

Another unspoken point of unanimity: there are likely MANY now who are grateful to the GOP’s conservative wing for sandbagging feelers two years ago about possibly sticking Gonzales on the Supreme Court.

Amen to that.

The hammering outside Congress was bipartisan as well. From the New Republic:

Maybe Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing would have gone better if he and the senators had worked out one major misunderstanding beforehand. In Gonzales’s trial to keep his job today, the senators–seated in a giant hearing room filled with hot-pink-clad protesters waving pocket constitutions–clearly understood Gonzales to be the defendant. The attorney general, however, seemed to believe he had been called as an expert forensic witness.

Throughout the hearing, Gonzales displayed an odd dissociation from his job as head of the Justice Department, often behaving more as though he was a diligent inspector general called in to analyze what had happened rather than someone who had made things happen himself.

And from National Review:

Judging by his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday, there are three questions about the U.S. attorneys mess that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wants answered: What did I know? When did I know it? And why did I fire those U.S. attorneys?

As the day dragged on, it became clear — painfully clear to anyone who supports Gonzales — that the attorney general didn’t know the answers. Much of the time, he explained, he didn’t really know much at all — he was just doing what his senior staff recommended he do.

His testimony, in fact, reminded me of Ronald Reagan talking about Iran-Contra: "A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not."

It's like he's on the outside of his own life, looking in.

As I've said repeatedly, Gonzales deserves to be fired. Not because he let the White House interfere with U.S. attorneys, but because he's an incompetent sycophant.

Several observers have complained about the rowdy protesters at the hearing. On the one hand, I applaud Congress opening up the Capitol to people interested in politics, not just tourists admiring the woodwork. I've grown tired of even silent statements, such as message t-shirts, being banned in the galleries of our national legislature.

That said, Gonzales did not deserve having to endure five hours of heckling. The first few outbursts drew rebukes from Chairman Patrick Leahy. Subsequent outbursts should have led to the demonstrators being removed for disrupting the proceedings.

The hammering only intensified today.

Dana Milbank at the Washington Post: "For much of the very long day, the attorney general responded like a child caught in a lie. He shifted his feet under the table, balled his hands into fists and occasionally pointed at his questioners. He defended his actions: 'The decision stands.' He denied responsibility: 'This was a process that was ongoing that I did not have transparency into.' He blamed the victims: 'Poor judgment . . . poor management.' He blamed his subordinates: 'When there are attacks against the department, you're attacking the career professionals.' Mostly, though, he retreated to memory loss."

The Dallas Morning News: " Senate Judiciary Committee members mauled the attorney general yesterday, but that was no surprise. Knowing that he was walking into an ambush, it was shocking to see how ill-prepared Mr. Gonzales was. His responses throughout a tough day of direct questioning failed to defend the firings, failed to explain his own role credibly and failed to establish that he is capable of running the Department of Justice."

Captain's Quarters: "I support Republicans because they usually represent competence and smaller government, not because I belong to the Republican Tribe. I'm not going to support or defend obvious incompetence on the part of Republicans, and Gonzales has been an incompetent in this matter, as Tom Coburn rightly points out....

"Four months after the firings and after a month of preparation, Gonzales still couldn't completely answer Brownback on why each attorney got fired. He testified that he hadn't even met with most of them about those reasons he could recite. He admitted that he wrongly accused them of poor performance in his public statements. He told the Senate yesterday that he objected to the plan Kyle Sampson presented him in November about rolling out the terminations, and then could not answer why that plan got followed over his objections by his aide.

"Is that competence? Is this our argument for 2008 in asking the American public to trust Republicans with power? If it is, and we cannot bring ourselves to demand better from this administration, be prepared for a very disappointing 2008."

Yowch.

Gonzales, politics, midtopia

A new rule for political debate

The other day, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid voiced an opinion on the Iraq war.

"The (Iraq) war can only be won diplomatically, politically and economically, and the president needs to come to that realization," Reid said in a news conference.

Later Thursday on the Senate floor, Reid said: "As long as we follow the president's path in Iraq, the war is lost. But there is still a chance to change course -- and we must change course." The war funding bill should contain a timeline to "reduce combat missions and refocus our efforts on the real threats to our security," he said.

It's a reasonably big deal when the leader of the Senate says something like that. Coverage and commentary are expected.

But I'm getting darned tired of the garbage from places like Wake Up America, which called Democrats "the Tokyo Rose of Iraq."

Or the "shut the hell up, you traitor!" letters compiled by Michelle Malkin.

Then there are the lesser offenses, like characterizing the timetables included in the war-funding bills as tantamount to surrender in Iraq or even the larger fight against terror -- even though the bills give Bush even more money than he asked for, the timelines don't kick in for at least a year, the Senate timetables aren't even mandatory, and the whole point of the bills is to refocus resources from the Iraq distraction so that we can more effectively combat terrorism.

Note the logic (or lack thereof): In debating the war, any suggestion that the war should be ended or cannot be won is treason and disloyalty. Thus the only valid debate is over how best to continue fighting the war -- not whether we should continue fighting it.

The "damned if you do, damned if you don't" logic lines that people set up are just ridiculous. If Democrats don't propose an immediate end to the war, they're liars and cowards; if they do, they're traitors. No matter what they do, war supporters get to slam them.

Such a logical setup -- and it is committed by people from all parts of the ideological spectrum -- should be accepted as proof of partisan framing and disregarded as a fallacy.

I think Reid is jumping the gun, inasmuch as the surge still needs time to prove itself -- the recent humongous carnage in Baghdad notwithstanding. But that's just my opinion, not received fact. Maybe I'm wrong and he's right. Heck, maybe we're both wrong and Bush is right, unlikely as that would seem.

In a democracy, it is perfectly acceptable to voice the opinion that the war is unwinnable. That is the only way to have a free and full debate over the war and thus arrive at the best policy. It is distinctly unAmerican to frame the issue in such a way as to disallow viewpoints you don't like.

The good news is that after four years of such rhetoric from rabid war backers, I think many, many people are getting heartily sick of it and recognize just how illegitimate the framing is -- and starting to wonder why such partisans fear opposing viewpoints so much that they try to drown them out rather than simply deal with them on the merits.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon confirms that Bush has been scaremongering on the effects of delaying the funding bills and the Secretary of Defense apparently gives comfort to Al-Qaeda by warning the Iraqi government that "the clock is ticking" on U.S. involvement.

Reid, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Coburn says Gonzales should resign

A full post on Gonzales' testimony will have to wait until tomorrow. I only caught part of it on the radio, and I haven't had time to delve into it as deeply as I'd like to.

But this is worth mentioning:

Republican as well as Democratic lawmakers challenged the embattled attorney general during an often-bitter five-hour hearing before the Judiciary Committee. Lawmakers confronted Gonzales with documents and sworn testimony they said showed he was more involved in the dismissals than he contended.

"The best way to put this behind us is your resignation," Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma bluntly told Gonzales, one conservative to another. Gonzales disagreed, rejecting the idea that his departure would put the controversy to rest.

It's also not a good sign that after weeks of preparation, and knowing what the questions would be, Gonzales said "I don't know" or "I don't remember" 71 times. That's not quite as many as Kyle Sampson produced, but it's still a lot -- although one could expect quite a few of those in daylong testimony, with many repeated questions.

Other Republicans appeared to be of a mind with Coburn, even if they stopped short of openly asking for Gonzales' resignation.

Lindsey Graham: Called most of Gonzales' explanations for the firings "a stretch."

Jeff Sessions: "I think it's going to be difficult for him to be an effective leader."

Arlen Specter: Gonzales' answers "did not stick together."

Charles Grassley: "Why is your story changing?"

More tomorrow.

Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Could Virginia Tech killer have been stopped from buying guns?

Sadly, the answer is apparently yes -- if our background-check system weren't being sabotaged.

I'm not a big gun-control advocate. I grew up shooting guns. Then I joined the Army, where I got to shoot really big guns: M16s, M60s, SAWs and, of course, the 105mm main gun of an M1 (that final detail dates me, because M1s have since been upgunned to 120mm). I have no problem with reasonable restrictions on firearms, but I don't think there should be hugely cumbersome barriers to gun ownership.

That said, sometimes gun nuts make me mad.

A judge's ruling on Cho Seung-Hui's mental health should have barred him from purchasing the handguns he used in the Virginia Tech massacre, according to federal regulations. But it was unclear Thursday whether anybody had an obligation to inform federal authorities about Cho's mental status because of loopholes in the law that governs background checks....

The language of the ruling by Special Justice Paul M. Barnett almost identically tracks federal regulations from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Those rules bar the sale of guns to individuals who have been "adjudicated mentally defective."

The definition outlined in the regulations is "a determination by a court ... or other lawful authority that a person as a result of marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness ... is a danger to himself or to others."

There's nothing in Virginia state law barring the mentally ill from buying guns, unless they're committed to a psych ward. But federal law is tougher.

About that loophole:

George Burke, a spokesman for Democratic Rep. Carolyn McCarthy of New York, said millions of criminal and mental-health records are not accessible to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, mostly because state and local governments lack the money to submit the records.

McCarthy has sponsored legislation since 2002 that would close loopholes in the national background check system for gun purchases.

Initially states were required to provide all relevant information to federal authorities when the instant background checks were enacted, but a U.S. Supreme Court ruling relieved them of that obligation.

So it's not so much a loophole, as a lack of money. But there is nothing requiring states and localities to share information with the Feds, so without proper funding, many don't. Meaning the National Instant Criminal Background Check System has some big holes in its database.

McCarthy's efforts to change that have gone nowhere, thanks in part to opposition from groups like Gun Owners of America. Each time, her bill has passed the House but died in the Senate.

Notably, the NRA has not opposed the measures. That said, the NRA has not been entirely on the sidelines here. Besides fighting efforts to institute background checks at gun shows, consider the "Supreme Court ruling" referenced in the article.

That line is somewhat inaccurate. The 1997 case, Printz v. United States, involved temporary measures intended to facilitate background checks between the time the Brady Bill was passed (in 1993) and 1998, when the NICS database would be established. It was rendered moot when the NICS went online.

But the basic facts remain: The NRA funded the lawsuit, which opposed Brady Bill background checks. Their specific legal argument was essentially that it was an unfunded mandate on local police and sheriff departments, and they won on those grounds; but their purpose was to stop background checks. Since then, the NRA has fought aspects of NICS, notably the length of time that records can be retained after a purchase. It's down to 24 hours from the original 180 days. That means the FBI has just 24 hours after a purchase to find and fix a mistaken approval.

It's worth asking: If gun groups weren't so busy damaging the machinery of the background-check system, would 32 people be alive today? We're not talking gun bans -- we're talking about making sure we have a working system to keep guns out of the hands of people like Cho, on whom red flags have already been planted.

Gun Owners of America, in particular, should be ashamed of themselves.

Update: An article from CNN contradicts the premise of this thread (and the article it is based on), claiming that only involuntary committment to a mental ward would have put Cho into the NICS. One of them is wrong.

Update II: Using the NYT as a tiebreaker, the original story appears correct: he should not have been able to buy the gun, because while he was in accord with Virginia state law, he was ineligible under federal law.

The main problem, as noted, is reportage:

Currently, only 22 states submit any mental health records to the federal National Instant Criminal Background Check System, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement on Thursday. Virginia is the leading state in reporting disqualifications based on mental health criteria for the federal check system, the statement said.

Virginia state law on mental health disqualifications to firearms purchases, however, is worded slightly differently from the federal statute. So the form that Virginia courts use to notify state police about a mental health disqualification addresses only the state criteria, which list two potential categories that would warrant notification to the state police: someone who was “involuntarily committed” or ruled mentally “incapacitated.”

No matter where you stand on gun control, that disconnect needs to change.

Virgina Tech, gun control, politics, midtopia

Oh, Wolfowitz

I've been too busy to write much about the other brewing scandal in Washington, that of Paul Wolfowitz and his girlfriend's cushy job. It's not because I'm a big fan of his; in fact, whenever I need a good "laugh or else I'll cry" moment, I hunt up links like this one to read up on arguably his finest moment: the trashing of Gen. Eric Shinseki:

In his testimony, Mr. Wolfowitz ticked off several reasons why he believed a much smaller coalition peacekeeping force than General Shinseki envisioned would be sufficient to police and rebuild postwar Iraq. He said there was no history of ethnic strife in Iraq, as there was in Bosnia or Kosovo. He said Iraqi civilians would welcome an American-led liberation force that "stayed as long as necessary but left as soon as possible," but would oppose a long-term occupation force. And he said that nations that oppose war with Iraq would likely sign up to help rebuild it.

Bwahahaha! Flat wrong on the first, and the second might have been true if we hadn't a) sent too few troops to keep order or b) prevented it.

Then throw in this:

Mr. Wolfowitz spent much of the hearing knocking down published estimates of the costs of war and rebuilding, saying the upper range of $95 billion was too high, and that the estimates were almost meaningless because of the variables. Moreover, he said such estimates, and speculation that postwar reconstruction costs could climb even higher, ignored the fact that Iraq is a wealthy country, with annual oil exports worth $15 billion to $20 billion. "To assume we're going to pay for it all is just wrong," he said.

Bwahaha! HA HA HA!

Oh, that Wolfowitz. What a kidder.

After manfully helping guide us into a bad war, he was rewarded with a chance to do real damage at the World Bank, where he was able to hector debtor nations to be more fiscally responsible while helping squeeze their economies with austerity measures and stiff payback schedules.

Actually, he hasn't been that bad at the World Bank. His anticorruption drive has drawn fire, but there's much to like about it, and while critics have a point about being careful not to intrude too much on a nation's internal affairs, it's hard to sympathize with countries complaining about crackdowns on bribery -- especially when they're countries like China, which doesn't actually need the money it borrows from the Bank.

Upon taking the helm of the bank, though, Wolfowitz had to find a new job for his girlfriend, a bank employee. That's fair. And I have no problem with the transfer being a promotion or opportunity: she should not see her career suffer simply because her boyfriend got promoted.

So while the details -- like her massive pay raises -- raised some eyebrows, it struck me as relatively small potatoes, even if it undercut Wolfowitz's anti-corruption agenda.

But this is just ridiculous.

The U.S. Defense Department ordered a contractor to hire a World Bank employee and girlfriend of then-Pentagon No. 2 Paul Wolfowitz in 2003 for work related to Iraq, the contractor said on Tuesday.

A spokeswoman for Science Applications International Corp., or SAIC, said the Defense Department's policy office directed the company to enter a subcontract with Shaha Riza, under which she spent a month studying ways to form a government in Iraq.

Wolfowitz, a key Iraq war architect who left the Pentagon in 2005 to become president of the World Bank, is already under fire for overseeing a high-paying promotion for Riza after he took the helm of the poverty-fighting global lender.

This isn't as egregious as it could be, because the contract paid expenses only, not a salary. And right now all we have is the claim of a contractor. But if this turns out to be true, it's unacceptable. The Pentagon had no business insisting that a contractor hire someone connected to a senior Pentagon official.

What remains to be seen as well is whether Wolfowitz himself had any hand in this. If he did, he will face more than ethical questions: he'll probably face criminal charges.

Wait, was that a tear? Nope. My mistake.

Wolfowitz, politics, midtopia

More trouble for Gonzales

The Virginia Tech shootings have prompted a postponement of Alberto Gonzales' Congressional appearance, which may be a good thing for him; it'll give him time to come up with an explanation for this.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' assertion that he was not involved in identifying the eight U.S. attorneys who were asked to resign last year is at odds with a recently released internal Department of Justice e-mail, ABC News has learned.

That e-mail said that Gonzales supported firing one federal prosecutor six months before she was asked to leave....

It doesn't just contradict Gonzales' initial account, an explanation of which will be the focus of his appearance. It appears to contradict the testimony he has prepared for that appearance, in which he states the following:

Mr. Sampson periodically updated me on the review. As I recall, his updates were brief, relatively few in number, and focused primarily on the review process itself. During those updates, to my knowledge, I did not make decisions about who should or should not be asked to resign.

Except that:

The recently released e-mail from Sampson, dated June 1, 2006, indicated that Gonzales was actively involved in discussions about Lam and had decided to fire her if she did not improve. In the e-mail to other top Justice Department officials, Sampson outlined several steps that Gonzales suggested, culminating in Lam's replacement if she failed to bolster immigration enforcement.

"AG [Attorney General] has given additional thought to the San Diego situation and now believes that we should adopt a plan" that would lead to her removal if she "balks" at immigration reform, Sampson wrote.

The e-mail laid out other possible ways to deal with Lam short of dismissal. Gonzales supported the idea of first having "a heart to heart with Lam about the urgent need to improve immigration enforcement" and of working with her "to develop a plan for addressing the problem." Sampson said another alternative would be to "put her on a very short leash.

"If she balks on any of the foregoing or otherwise does not perform in a measurable way … remove her," Sampson wrote of Gonzales' suggested plan. "AG then appoints new U.S. [attorney] from outside the office."

Will we be treated to the spectacle of Gonzales "clarifying" his clarification?

Meanwhile, the House is considering granting immunity to Monica Goodling, the Gonzales aide that took the Fifth in order to avoid testifying, as the Justice Department refuses to comply with a Congressional subpoena and a reinterview with Kyle Sampson now has the House Judiciary Committee interested in Mary Beth Buchanan, the U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh, who Sampson said was consulted about the firings.

Update: The Senate apparently is investigating Sen. Pete Domenici's role in the firings as well.

Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Prosecutor bias in Wisconsin

As Alberto Gonzales prepares to testify before Congress, expect the case of Georgia Thompson to get an extensive airing.

Opponents of Gov. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin spent $4 million on ads last year trying to link the Democratic incumbent to a state employee who was sent to jail on corruption charges. The effort failed, and Mr. Doyle was re-elected — and now the state employee has been found to have been wrongly convicted. The entire affair is raising serious questions about why a United States attorney put an innocent woman in jail.

The conviction of Georgia Thompson has become part of the furor over the firing of eight United States attorneys in what seems like a political purge. While the main focus of that scandal is on why the attorneys were fired, the Thompson case raises questions about why other prosecutors kept their jobs.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which heard Ms. Thompson’s case this month, did not discuss whether her prosecution was political — but it did make clear that it was wrong. And in an extraordinary move, it ordered her released immediately, without waiting to write a decision. “Your evidence is beyond thin,” Judge Diane Wood told the prosecutor. “I’m not sure what your actual theory in this case is.”

What was so unusual about this case? A list:

1. It wasn't even within the jurisdiction of the U.S. attorney who prosecuted it, Steven Biskupic -- it was in the domain of Wisconsin's other U.S. attorney, Erik Peterson.

2. Thompson was accused of improperly awarding a travel contract to a politically connected firm. This ignored the fact that the contract was competitively bid. The firm in question won the contract by the simple expedient of having the lowest bid.

3. Thompson was but one of seven members of a committee that awarded the contract, and she wasn't even aware that the firm was a major contributor to Gov. Doyle.

4. Biskupic leaked the investigation to the media in late 2005, in violation of federal guidelines.

5. The prosecution was timed perfectly to conclude just before the November elections.

Yeah, that looks good.

Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Gonzales: "I have nothing to hide"

The Justice Department has released the opening statement -- all 25 pages of it -- that Alberto Gonzales intends to read at the start of his testimony tomorrow before Congress.

Critics will not be mollified.

He boldly asserts that while the prosecutor firings may have been handled badly, they were not improper. He proposes a simple criteria for impropriety: "The
replacement of one or more U.S. attorneys in order to impede or speed along particular criminal investigations for illegitimate reasons." He then adds: "Our record in bringing aggressive prosecutions without fear or favor and irrespective of political affiliations – a record I am very proud of – is beyond reproach."

He might not get past that statement, because it's demonstrably untrue. We know that several of the prosecutors were criticized for being insufficiently zealous about prosecuting voter fraud. Given that the "voter fraud" initiative overwhelmingly focused on Democrats, included some really questionable cases with big political implications and turned up little to no evidence of such fraud, it's hard to see how that could be construed as a nonpartisan effort. And that's without referring to the disputed study that concluded Democrats were investigated or indicted seven times as often as Republicans. So it's hard to see how Gonzales can make his claim with a straight face.

He now acknowledges that he was kept briefed on the progress of the prosecutor firings, including discussion of specific names, while saying he did not make any decisions about who should be fired. His explanation is reasonable -- he basically viewed the prosecutors as presidential employees, so his input didn' matter -- but not only does this contradict his earlier statements, but it's kind of stunning that the head of the Justice Department would take no role and no apparent interest in the firings of a tenth of his prosecutors. As several observers have noted, such detachment would appear to be de facto proof that Gonzales failed in his responsibility to protect the independence of federal prosecutors.

In that context, his acknowledgement that he was "less than precise" with his earlier words reads like a euphemism for "I lied." Especially given his tortured parsing of his earlier words, in which "I knew my chief of staff was involved in the process" is supposed to have meant "I was being briefed by him, even though I just said I was not involved in any discussions."

He points to changes he is implementing, notably starting an investigation by Justice's internal watchdog and improving communication with the current crop of U.S. attorneys.

The one mistake he acknowledges making is that the firings should have been handled in a more "personal and respectful" way. But mostly he deflects criticism toward Kyle Sampson.

That takes up 7 pages. Then he segues into a discussion of national security, notably defending the various eavesdropping and investigative tools authorized by the Patriot Act. But while he cites a short list of accomplishments, he doesn't demonstrate how those are connected to the powers in question. He only addresses the FBI's abuse of National Security Letters in the context of "we're improving oversight." The interesting news there is that the FBI is conducting a comprehensive review of NSLs at all 56 FBI field offices -- a far more extensive look than the four-office sample that led to the discovery of NSL abuses. And, of course, the even more egregious use of "exigent letters" is banned.

He also, rather comically, argues for a revison of FISA -- a law that as White House counsel he considered irrelevant, overridden by the president's "inherent authority." Having openly violated FISA for years, it's pretty nervy to now ask Congress to revise it.

And then he closes with this line: "We all recognize that we cannot afford to make progress in the War on Terror at the cost of eroding our bedrock civil liberties. Our Nation is, and always will be, dedicated to liberty for all, a value that we cannot and will not sacrifice, even in the name of winning this war. I will not accept failures in this regard."

Pretty funny coming from the guy most instrumental in eroding those liberties.

The rest of the testimony is dedicated to fairly noncontroversial items, like fighting crimes against children, drug abuse, and so on.

Dan Froomkin has some other thoughts on the matter, with links to other good examples of Gonzales word torture, as well as Sen. Pat Leahy's dismissive response.

And then there's this piece from the Albuquerque Journal (h/t: Moderate Voice), suggesting that at least one of the prosecutors -- David Iglesias -- was fired after Sen. Pete Domenici pressured President Bush. It indicates repeated pressure and questioning of Iglesias by Domenici, notably an aggressive attempt to increase corruption prosecutions -- over Iglesias' demurrals -- after Iglesias indicted two prominent Democrats in 2005.

Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Conservatives want Gonzales gone

Just in Time for Gonzales' Congressional appearance:

In what could prove an embarrassing new setback for embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on the eve of his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, a group of influential conservatives and longtime Bush supporters has written a letter to the White House to call for his resignation....

"Mr. Gonzales has presided over an unprecedented crippling of the Constitution's time-honored checks and balances," it declares. "He has brought rule of law into disrepute, and debased honesty as the coin of the realm." Alluding to ongoing scandal, it notes: "He has engendered the suspicion that partisan politics trumps evenhanded law enforcement in the Department of Justice."

Among the signers are Bruce Fein and Richard Viguerie, prominent Republican activists; David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union; Bob Barr, a former Republican Congressman; John Whitehead of the conservative Rutherford Institute.

As the story notes, many conservatives have disliked Gonzales for other reasons for years. But this just underscores the lack of support Gonzales has anywhere outside the White House -- and the political costs of his continued presence atop Justice.

Here's the full text of the letter.

Gonzales, politics, midtopia

White House e-mails deleted

You know that brewing scandal over White House use of RNC e-mail addresses?

Well, it just got a lot, lot bigger:

Countless e-mails to and from many key White House staffers have been deleted -- lost to history and placed out of reach of congressional subpoenas -- due to a brazen violation of internal White House policy that was allowed to continue for more than six years, the White House acknowledged yesterday.

The problem:

Until 2004, all e-mail on RNC accounts was routinely deleted after 30 days. Since 2004, White House staffers using those accounts have been able to save their e-mail indefinitely -- but have also been able to delete whatever they felt like deleting. By comparison, the White House e-mail system preserves absolutely everything forever, in accordance with the Presidential Records Act.

The part that will have administration critics salivating:

The leading culprit appears to be President Bush's enormously influential political adviser Karl Rove, who reportedly used his Republican National Committee-provided Blackberry and e-mail accounts for most of his electronic communication.

Now one could argue that the problem, while real, was inadvertent, not done with evil intent. And I'm sure the familiar sight of administration incompetence partly explains the problem.

But it stretches credibility to think that someone as highly placed as Rove would not have understood the very clear White House rules governing e-mail:

"Federal law requires the preservation of electronic communications sent or received by White House staff," says the handbook that all staffers are given and expected to read and comply with.

"As a result, personnel working on behalf of the EOP [Executive Office of the President] are expected to only use government-provided e-mail services for all official communication."

The handbook further explains: "The official EOP e-mail system is designed to automatically comply with records management requirements."

And if that wasn't clear enough, the handbook notes -- as was the case in the Clinton administration -- that "commercial or free e-mail sites and chat rooms are blocked from the EOP network to help staff members ensure compliance and to prevent the circumvention of the records management requirements."

So we're left with three possible explanations:

1. Karl Rove is an idiot;

2. Karl Rove thought the rules didn't apply to him;

3. Karl Rove deliberately circumvented the records laws.

The answer, for now, appears to be #2:

For Rove, a noted Blackberry addict who holds the position of senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, that would have meant switching from one device to another when alternating from White House business to Republican party business. Apparently he didn't bother.

I wrote in my earlier post that as a blogger with multiple e-mail accounts, I can understand how staffers could have inadvertently used the wrong account on occasion. But this isn't inadvertent misuse; this is blatant disregard for the rules.

And it's not just Rove. Fifty White House staffers were issued RNC communications gear, and apparently many of them also used the RNC gear for official business and improperly deleted messages.

And in classic Bush administration fashion, it's nobody's fault:

So is anyone in trouble? Apparently not. Stanzel was careful to apportion blame widely and generically. "This issue is not the fault of one individual," he said. He refused even to acknowledge that it is the White House counsel's office that is responsible for the establishment and oversight of internal rules of conduct. The White House counsel during Bush's entire first term, of course, was Alberto Gonzales, now the embattled attorney general.

There's more. Read the whole thing. And check out the related coverage. Particularly note the case of Rove aide Susan Ralston, who deliberately used RNC accounts to communicate with Jack Abramoff. And if you want another indication that the White House was fully aware of the situation and that transgressions were not inadvertent, read this:

In another e-mail exchange revealed during the investigation of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a White House official was described as warning that "it is better to not put this stuff in writing in [the White House] . . . email system because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc." Abramoff responded in an e-mail that the message in question "was not supposed to go into the WH system."

It's hard to read that as anything other than a deliberate circumvention of the law. The Democrats are going to have a field day. And deservedly so.

Update: Sen. Patrick Leahy blows a gasket. Yikes.

RNC, Rove, politics, midtopia