Republicans claim "meaningful amendments" crown!

We're all of three months into the 110th Congress, so of course it's time to grade the Republicans. At least, that's what House Republicans seem to think.

This is a special sort of report card, in which they choose the categories and introduce them with a self-serving blurb. But what the heck. Here's what they have to say for themselves:

House Republicans have successfully passed more meaningful amendments in the first three months on 2007, than the Democrats were able to pass in the past 12 years. One prominent analyst remarked that House Republicans are creating "a series of substantaive wins" through effective use of procedural rights on the floor.

Wow. "More meaningful amendments." Anyone else impressed? The "prominent analyst," by the way, is lobbyist and conservative Washington Times op-ed contributor Gary Andres.

The ironic thing is that their relative success in this small-bore world can be ascribed to the Democrats not using the hardball tactics employed by Republicans when they were in the majority. Indeed, Andres speculates with apparent glee that the raging GOP success with "meaningful amendments" may lead Democrats to clamp down on that openness. I'm not sure why he considers that a good thing.

Next up: Online communication.

House Republicans are reaching out to the online community more aggressively than ever before; Rep. Cantor is proud to be a part of this effort. In the past three months, House Republicans have held a successful blog row, produced several online web ads, been in constant communication with the blogs, among other ideas. How successful do you feel these efforts have been?

Double wow. I thought we were supposed to be ranking their job performance, not their PR efforts.

Lastly, defining the stakes (or, as the secondary label puts it, "Showing that Democrats are wrong for America"):

House Democrats are making a lot of legislative mistakes; in just their first three months of holding power, they have passed the largest tax hike in American history, failed to fund America’s troops, and increased the federal budget by billions with pork projects. How effective do you feel House Republicans have been in highlighting these errors?

Nah, no spin there. And once again, why are we grading PR efforts?

That, by the way, is it. The entire report card you are encouraged to fill out.

I could tut-tut about this, but really it's the political equivalent of mind candy. And for people with any perspective at all, it would be all in good fun. I'm just not sure the designers of this report card actually have perspective, because they seem so serious about it. It's almost as if they don't realize how ridiculously blinkered they sound.

politics, midtopia

Subpoenas for Gonzales

Speaking of subpoenas, the House Judiciary Committee officially subpoenaed Alberto Gonzales for hundreds of as-yet-unreleased documents related to the prosecutor firings.

"We have been patient in allowing the department to work through its concerns regarding the sensitive nature of some of these materials," Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the judiciary panel's chairman, wrote Gonzales in a letter that accompanied the subpoena. "Unfortunately, the department has not indicated any meaningful willingness to find a way to meet our legitimate needs."

The Justice Department indicated it may fight the demand.

"Much of the information that the Congress seeks pertains to individuals other than the U.S. attorneys who resigned," Roehrkasse said. "Furthermore, many of the documents Congress is now seeking have already been available to them for review. Because there are individual privacy interests implicated by publicly releasing this information, it is unfortunate the Congress would choose this option."

Gonzales, meanwhile, is still AWOL from his job as he crams like a college sophomore for his upcoming Congressional appearance. One can hardly blame him, but I can't help thinking how all of this could have been avoided if he had devoted a fraction of the effort to preparing for his first appearance back in March, during which he lied -- er, inadvertently said things that weren't true.

Next week should be interesting.

Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Hypocrisy, Republican flavor

This is funny:

A Republican congressman who issued a large number of subpoenas for Clinton administration officials in the 1990s joined fellow Republicans in criticizing Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman for alleged overuse of subpoena authority....

[Rep. Dan Burton] chaired the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the 1990s, and became famous for issuing a wide variety of subpoenas to Clinton White House staff and other executive branch officials. In a report on the oversight activities conducted to date in the 110th Congress, Burton joined other House Republicans to warn Democrats not to "abuse" their authority.

"The minority is concerned the majority may abuse the deposition authority provided to this committee under the 110th House Rules. The minority also is concerned with the majority's practice of threatening subpoenas to witnesses unless they 'agree' to transcribed interviews," warned Burton with other Congress members.

Dems do the same thing, of course. Indeed, the article sounds a cautionary note for them, from former White House counsel Lanny Davis:

"We complained about Burton’s use of the subpoena power in the 1990s and need to show restraint and not use the same clearly partisan tactics," he argued.

Yep. Tempting as it is to play tit for tat, Dems need to take the high road. They were elected to oversee the executive branch, not bury it in partisan investigations. In the prosecutor case they have come dangerously close to overplaying their hand a couple of times, only to be saved by further White House bumbling. They can't count on getting that lucky all the time. They are probably convinced that the administration is a sea of corruption and vice. But the way to expose that is to find a thread and unravel it, not go on unjustified fishing expeditions.

Burton, politics, midtopia

RNC e-mails itself into trouble

I sympathize with Republicans on this one.

Several senior White House Republicans were given Republican National Committee laptops and pagers to use alongside their government-issued equipment, an effort to avoid charges that government gear was used for campaign purposes.

But recent revelations in the Scooter Libby trial and the fired prosecutors brouhaha suggest that the computers may have been used to keep sensitive information out of official government archives.

"The system was created with the best intentions," said former Assistant White House Press Secretary Adam Levine, who was assigned an RNC laptop and BlackBerry when he worked at the White House in 2002. But, he added, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, last week formally requested access to broad categories of RNC-White House e-mails.

Waxman told the Los Angeles Times in a statement that a separate "e-mail system for high-ranking White House officials would raise serious questions about violations of the Presidential Records Act," which requires the preservation and ultimate disclosure of e-mails about official government business.

It's easy to see how something like that could happen inadvertently. You're e-mailing back and forth during the day -- sometimes official business, sometimes party business. It can be hard to keep things straight, and be rigorous about when to use which e-mail account. I blog under a pseudonym, and there have been several times when I almost sent out a personal e-mail from my blog e-mail address, and vice versa.

It's a problem that's only going to get worse, with the proliferation of instant messaging and text messaging and all the other ways we have of communicating. Someday a war will be started entirely through IM, I'm sure of it, with the final line being "That's it! Look out ur wndw, @zzh@t. Whos laffing now?"

That said, having set up the parallel systems, it was incumbent on the administration to make sure they were used properly. Preservation of government records is no small thing. So at a minimum, the administration was careless and deserves to endure some scrutiny and bad press to ensure they fix the problem.

Worst case would be if they deliberately used alternate e-mail addresses to get around the records laws and try to avoid accountability. That would go beyond careless and into real scandal territory. There's as yet no proof that that's the case, but there is once again enough smoke to warrant an investigation. If nothing else, we want to be sure that the official communications are properly recovered and archived for posterity.

There's a limit to what sort of probe should be allowed, though. Waxman is essentially asking to look at internal RNC communications, which would be like the Soviet Union having a mole in the CIA Director's office. The administration has only itself to blame for muddying the communication waters; but any subpoena request should be narrowly crafted to find only misdirected government communications, and not turn into a license to tromp through the RNC's databases.

politics, midtopia

Yet another Gonzales roundup

Over the weekend, Monica Goodling -- having taken the Fifth to avoid testifying before Congress -- abruptly resigned from the Justice Department, becoming the second high-ranking Justice official to become unemployed over this "overblown personnel matter," as Gonzales first referred to the prosecutor firings.

And Newt Gingrich became the latest Republican to say Gonzales is toast.

The most interesting thing about Goodling's firing -- besides the questions it raises, fair or not, about what she might have had to hide -- is that it highlights a two-pronged administration practice: Prizing loyalty above competence, and relying heavily on Pat Robertson's law school -- a poorly rated evangelical Christian institution -- as a source of those loyalists.

On the one hand, as with the prosecutor firings, the administration has every right to put anyone it wants in appointed posts. But that political power carries with it a public responsibility that the administration seems to have roundly ignored. The problem, as Andrew Cohen succinctly puts it:

There is no longer a meritocracy in place at the Justice Department when it comes to hiring decisions. Where the Department once was staffed by some of the best and brightest lawyers in the nation, now it has become a repository for the Monica Goodlings of the world. If you were a dedicated federal prosecutor, a Bush appointee, would you want some younger lawyer from some fourth-rate law school determining your future? You wouldn't. And yet that's precisely what happened here to our Gang of Eight. They weren't judged by the best and the brightest and the most seasoned and respected attorneys in the nation; they were judged by Monica Goodling, a legal disciple of Pat Robertson.

The fact that the appointees are Christian isn't the issue, although the law school in question does point out the pull that Pat Robertson and his fellow travelers still have on the GOP, to its detriment. Robertson, you may recall, is the caricature who blamed Hurricane Katrina on abortion, suggested that God would wipe out a gay-pride parade and who, along with Jerry Falwell, blamed 9/11 on abortion, feminism and gays. I'm unimpressed by the GOP's continued association with him.

No, the problem here is putting party and politics above all else. There's an old joke about how Republicans rail about government incompetence, and then prove it when they get elected. The Bush administration apparently failed to realize that it was meant to be a joke.

And it may be what led to situations like this:

Ms. Thompson, a purchasing official in the state’s Department of Administration, was accused by the United States attorney in Milwaukee, Steven Biskupic, of awarding a travel contract to a company whose chief executive contributed to the campaign of Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat. Ms. Thompson said the decision was made on the merits, but she was convicted and sent to prison before she could appeal.

The prosecution was a boon to Mr. Doyle’s opponent. Republicans ran a barrage of attack ads that purported to tie Ms. Thompson’s “corruption” to Mr. Doyle. Ms. Thompson was sentenced shortly before the election, which Governor Doyle won.

The Chicago-based United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit seemed shocked by the injustice of her conviction. It took the extraordinary step of releasing Ms. Thompson from prison immediately after hearing arguments, without waiting to issue a ruling. One of the judges hinted that Ms. Thompson may have been railroaded. “It strikes me that your evidence is beyond thin,” Judge Diane Wood told the lawyer from Mr. Biskupic’s office.

The fear that this sort of thing was commonplace is the main reason the prosecutor firings is a scandal, even though the firings themselves were legal. Gonzales lying to Congress was simply an inept cherry on top.

Coincidentally, here in Minnesota we may have a related development. Three managers in the office of recent U.S. attorney appointee Rachel Paulose are resigning and returning to prosecuting cases, apparently a reaction to Paulose's "abrasive" and "disrespectful" management style -- prompting a senior Justice Department official, John Kelly, to fly in to mediate.

It's a case of "he said, she said" at this point: Is Paulose the problem? Or is it her assistants? That said, it's highly unusual that three of them resigned at the same time -- taking demotions and pay cuts in the process -- when they had no problem working with her predecessor, Tom Heffelfinger.

This could just be a standard, apolitical personnel issue -- the kind that can roil any office regardless of politics or the administration in charge. Paulose's defenders, for example, say the three had problems taking direction from a young woman, which is plausible. But the timing is enough to make you go "hmmm."

Gingrich, Paulose, Goodling, Gonzales, politics, midtopia

No Saddam-Al Qaeda link

So says the Defense Department. Dick Cheney, naturally, refuses to believe it.

Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two former aides "all confirmed" that Hussein's regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a declassified Defense Department report released yesterday.

The declassified version of the report, by acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble, also contains new details about the intelligence community's prewar consensus that the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda figures had only limited contacts, and about its judgments that reports of deeper links were based on dubious or unconfirmed information. The report had been released in summary form in February.

The report's release came on the same day that Vice President Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio program, repeated his allegation that al-Qaeda was operating inside Iraq "before we ever launched" the war, under the direction of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist killed last June.

Cheney really needs to come out of his bunker once in a while. He's become such a caricature that he's not even worth a detailed rebuttal anymore.

Cheney, terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

First rule: Disclose everything

In the "how to avoid charges of a coverup", the first rule is usually "disclose everything." If details start dribbling out from other sources over the course of days, it's going to hurt more than if you just lay everything out up front.

So in that sense, the current tussle over hundreds of as-yet unreleased documents related to the prosecutor firings is another bad step by Justice.

Democratic investigators were upset to learn about the additional batch of records in recent visits to the department, according to a Senate aide who requested anonymity to talk freely about the standoff.

The aide said the Senate Judiciary Committee "has lodged objections several times" about not being given the new documents. They were discovered over the past two weeks as staff investigators for the House and Senate judiciary panels, working in a special office inside the Justice Department, reviewed the censored portions of e-mails and other records that had already been sent to Capitol Hill in redacted form, according to Justice Department and Senate aides.

Another discovery of documents, another chunk taken out of any claim Justice has to the benefit of the doubt. From a damage-control and "restoring trust" point of view, they should just release documents to Congress and let the chips (and blame) fall where they may.

Justice claims the documents relate to personnel issues and it would be a breach of privacy to release them. Congress, on the other hand, understandably doesn't believe a word Justice says these days about the firings.

That said, this latest twist seems to be a bit of Congressional excess. Not only are some of the documents truly personal:

In particular, the official said, one document, several hundred pages long, was an internal administrative review of one of the fired prosecutors and was so sensitive that it would have been entirely redacted if it had been sent to Capitol Hill.

But Congressional aides were allowed to review the documents -- just not make copies or take notes. So it's not as if the contents have been hidden from the people that matter. If there was anything truly explosive in there, you can be sure that would come out somehow.

As long as Justice is letting investigators see the information in question, it doesn't matter if the rest of us find out about it. While Justice should be required to prove that the documents are too sensitive to release, if they can do so then Congress should drop its demands that they become public.

Meanwhile, the Senate Appropriations Committee said Gonzales cannot present his department's budget request until he settles the prosecutor flap -- thus raising more questions about whether he can effectively lead the department at this point. One could blame this entirely on the Democrats, of course, and certainly political calculations play into the decision. But the message here is that Congress has lost a lot of confidence in Gonzales, and his continued tenure as Justice head could lead Congress to view that department's budget requests unfavorably. It underlines the potential real-world costs of keeping Gonzales in place if he cannot adequately explain his actions.

Amid it all, another Republican -- Michigan Rep. Vern Ehlers -- says Gonzales should go.

Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Bush's Congressional end-around

Apparently Kerry won't get his scalp after all. From Fox news (pun intended):

President Bush named Republican fundraiser Sam Fox as U.S. ambassador to Belgium on Wednesday, using a maneuver that allowed him to bypass Congress where Democrats had derailed Fox's nomination.

Democrats had denounced Fox for his 2004 donation to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The group's TV ads, which claimed that Sen. John Kerry exaggerated his military record in Vietnam, were viewed as a major factor in the Massachusetts Democrat losing the election.

Recognizing Fox did not have the votes to obtain Senate confirmation, Bush withdrew the nomination last month. On Wednesday, with Congress out of town for a spring break, the president used his power to make recess appointments to put Fox in the job without Senate confirmation.

This means Fox can remain ambassador until the end of the next session of Congress, effectively through the end of the Bush presidency.

Okay, my bad; I should have seen that one coming. I just didn't consider that Bush would so blatantly ignore the Congress he has to work with for the next two years. Stuff like this will just make it that much more difficult to get other nominees approved, or get cooperation on the rest of his agenda. If your viewpoint is that Congress wouldn't cooperate anyway, fine. But I'm just not sure that installing Fox as ambassador to Belgium was so important that it was worth the cost.

We can also expect to see this sort of maneuver a lot more frequently in the months ahead, as Bush's term grows shorter and shorter and Congressional Democrats find reasons to drag their feet on many of his nominees, particularly judicial ones, in hopes that a Democrat will win the White House in 2008 and be able to fill those positions.

Is this legal? Yes. Have other presidents done this? Yes. But it's worth noting that the original point of recess appointments was simply to allow the machinery of government to function when Congress was out of session. It was never intended to be a way for the president to simply ignore the confirmation procedure.

Bush is not the first offender, and probably not the worst (though he has used recess appointments at a higher rate than Clinton); but that doesn't mean it's okay. If you respect the respective roles assigned to each branch of Congress by the Constitution, then presidents should only use recess appointments for the originally intended purpose. The equation changes a bit if you have an obstructionist Congress that refuses to confirm most presidential nominees. But that's not the case here.

As noted, the price will be paid politically. Whatever Bush's agenda is for the next two years, I think we can kiss most of it goodbye. Not for this one act, but for the attitude displayed by myriad similar acts over the past six years. Congressional Democrats may be gunning for Bush after six years of being walked on; but Bush is helping them dig his grave.

Update: I failed to point out that Fox wasn't the only recess appointment Bush made. He also made two fox-in-the-henhouse appointments: Susan Dudley, an opponent of government regulation, as White House regulatory czar; and Andrew Biggs, a supporter of Social Security privatization, as deputy Social Security commissioner. The latter appointment was also a direct slap at Congress, since Biggs' appointment had been rejected by the Senate in February.

The link notes that this is apparently the first time a president has made recess appointments during such a short recess, but otherwise this particular power has been broadly interpreted by presidents since the dawn of the Republic.

Congress does have one minor response: They can refuse to pay the recess appointees. But if the appointees are willing to serve for free, there's not much else Congress can do except fume.

recess appointment, Sam Fox, politics, midtopia

Three senior White House aides leaving

The Wall Street Journal calls it "routine turnover," but the timing is interesting.

Peter Wehner, the head of strategic initiatives, and political director Sara Taylor are expected to be heading for the White House exits soon, according to a person familiar with the situation. Barry Jackson, a longtime aide to Karl Rove, also is thought to be leaving soon.

A WaPo profile of Wehner supports the idea that it's just routine. ""I've been here six years, and there was just the sense that it was time to go. We've been through a lot," Wehner said in an interview. "If you're not going to stay through to the end, you have to figure out when to get off the train."

But while that may be the underlying reason, the particular timing may be due to the fact that being in the Bush administration is just not much fun anymore.

Although none of those leaving says so publicly, it has been an especially exhausting presidency, one in which many on the inside have grown frustrated by the political and policy setbacks of Bush's second term. Some aides look to the remainder of the administration and see more gloomy times.

Barry Jackson has been a subject of scrutiny amid questions about White House officials' heavy use of outside e-mail accounts to conduct politically sensitive communications. And Sara Taylor had at least a guest star role in the prosecutor firings. One of her deputies, Scott Jennings, has a subpoena with his name on it awaiting the outcome of negotiations with the White House over whether and under what conditions he and five other senior aides will talk about the dismissals.

Meanwhile, over in La La Land, Alberto Gonzales again defended his conduct. Stating "I believe in truth and accountability," he said he had not resigned because he was "fighting for the truth."

Hmm. So it was in the service of truth that he lied to Congress? It was because he places truth on a cherished pedestal that he's had to revise his statements several times to account for inconvenient facts? It's because he holds truth (and accountability) dearer than life itself that he has refused to, in fact, be held accountable?

Got it.

politics, midtopia

Sampson on the spot

This morning I got to watch a portion of the Congressional testimony of Kyle Sampson, the former chief of staff to Alberto Gonzales. I recommend finding the time to view parts of it yourself, because you get a sense of the actors far better than anything you'll get from a news summary or even a quality blog such as this one.

YouTube has tons of video to choose from.

Sampson came across as sincere and convincing, for the most part, though he seemed like a guy who was given far more responsibility than he could handle. He said "I don't know" or "I don't recall" a lot, but that's normal and prudent. He was particularly convincing when he flatly denied that the firings were related to ongoing investigations or other purely political considerations.

His main meme was clear: the firings were legal, but perhaps poorly handled. And the response to Congressional questioning was totally botched, which was why he resigned.

Fair enough, but there were plenty of troubling details that senators of both parties kept bringing up. Orrin Hatch pitched softballs, but Jeff Sessions sharply criticized the whole affair.

Some of the more notable points raised:

1. While saying the firings were based on performance, he acknowledged that the process was not "scientific nor extensively documented." Which led several senators to ask just what criteria were used to select these particular attorneys for removal.

2. He said Lam was criticized for her lack of immigration prosecutions. Then Sen. Diane Feinstein read a February 2006 letter from the Justice Department praising Lam for her immigration work in (I think) 2005, with prosecutions up three or fourfold and alien smuggling down by half. That said, the letter was apparently describing improvements over 2004. So one interpretation could be that Lam was doing a horrible job in 2004 -- when the firing process was already underway -- and her improved performance in 2005 wasn't enough to save her.

3. Sampson later added that Lam was also let go for her failure to go after gun violations aggressively enough, which seemed like a bit of alternate justification after his initial justification was undermined.

4. He repeated several times, under prodding from senators, that Gonzales said various things that were untrue in previous statements to Congress. On March 12, Gonzales said he was "not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions." But Sampson said he discussed the matter four or five times with Gonzales and kept him informed. And of course there was the Nov. 27 meeting at which Gonzales approved the firing plan. Gonzales said Sampson didn't share information within the department; Sampson said he did.

5. Sampson said the firings were in the works for two years, as they first compiled an initial list and then waited for the attorneys' terms to expire. But then there was this bombshell:

Sampson also revealed that New Mexico U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias was not added to the dismissal list until just before the Nov. 7 elections, after presidential adviser Karl Rove complained that Iglesias had not been aggressive enough in pursuing cases of voter fraud.

Not only proof of direct and forceful Rove involvement, but a last-minute addition that undermines the "two year" and "for performance" claims -- since they apparently had no problems with his performance up until that point, and it would seem difficult to properly assess his performance given the hastiness of the addition.

6. Sampson even suggested firing Patrick Fitzgerald in the middle of his prosecution of Lewis Libby. One can only imagine what a firestorm that would have caused. Luckily for all of us cooler heads prevailed, in the form of Harriet Miers. But that's saying something, consider Miers was the one who initially proposed firing all 93 attorneys at the beginning of Bush's second term. When she's considered the cooler head, you've got some trouble going.

So what does it all mean?

Sampson made a strong case that the firings were legal and proper, and at least some of them probably were. Kevin Ryan, for instance, the U.S. attorney in San Francisco, was a devoted Bush loyalist. His removal, everyone seems to agree, actually was performance-based.

But even that case highlights the political nature of the dismissals, because the administration wanted to keep him on because he was so loyal, despite myriad complaints about his performance.

And at least some of the firings, like Iglesias', seem to have no other explanation than politics.

Sampson made a spirited case defending even that practice, saying "the distinction between political and performance-related reasons for removing a U.S. attorney is, in my view, largely artificial." His general argument: if a U.S. attorney lacks political support or the confidence of the President, he cannot be effective.

Legally, he may be right. So far, Congress has not uncovered any criminal wrongdoing, and I don't think they're likely to. The attorneys do, after all, serve at the pleasure of the president. Firing them for sleazy reasons may be sleazy, but it's not illegal.

But ethically and politically, he's dead wrong. Ethically, the firings have undermined the independence, impartiality and morale of U.S. attorneys as a group -- something the attorneys themselves have been rather pointedly telling Gonzales. Politically it's just stupid, because the defense doesn't satisfy the understandable desire to believe our justice system is impartial. This seemed to be something that particularly incensed Sen. Sessions, who opened his statement by saying that he wanted to make clear the justice system worked and the U.S. attorneys were all fine, dedicated public servants, whatever doubts the current scandal may raise in that regard.

Then there's the little matter of lying to Congress. And on that score, I think Gonzales is doomed. His earlier statements have been almost entirely discredited, and his explanations ring hollow. His main defense is that he has since, uh, "clarified" his earlier statements, and his new version of events comports well with Sampson's. Why he considers that a defense, I don't know. Only the most sympathetic reading of his March 12 comments would lead one to say he was merely imprecise or misspoke. Even conservative bloggers have derided his tortured explication of what he meant by "involved", invoking the dreaded Clintonian "that depends what the meaning of 'is' is."

I've said all along that Gonzales should be fired for the totality of his resume, not the prosecutor firings. The true grounds are incompetence -- both in law and in management -- and a willingness to bless things like torture and "enemy combatant" statuses that are grossly violative of clearly written law and basic human decency.

Initially I was simply amused that a relatively minor flap such as this would be what finally brought him down. But Gonzales exceeded my expectations by choosing to lie. It is a fitting capper to the twilight of his tenure: He will be forced to resign because he managed to take a minor embarassment and turn it into a raging disaster.

Gonzales, Sampson, politics, midtopia

Gonzales deathwatch

Add Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., to the growing list of conservatives and Republicans who have criticized Alberto Gonzales' handling of the prosecutor firings.

(Parts of the list are here, here and here).

Compare that to the number of Republicans who have defended him: zero.

All this comes amid what one former Justice official describes as "open warfare" within the Justice department, something I commented on a couple of days ago.

At some point Gonzales will have to go simply to keep the Justice Department from imploding -- if it hasn't already.

Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Gonzales aide will plead the Fifth

Monica Goodling is taking the Fifth.

That never looks good. Her defense lawyer cites the Libby case as reason for refusing to testify even though she has nothing to hide, and accuses Congressional Democrats of having already made up their minds about her guilt. But lines like that rarely work, because it doesn't really explain why she is unable to safely explain herself. If nothing else, the perception will be that she does have something to hide.

Who is Goodling? Gonzales senior counsel and White House liaison, who was up to her eyeballs in the prosecutor firings.

Goodling was one of five senior Justice Department aides who met with Gonzales for that Nov. 27 discussion. Department documents released Friday to Capitol Hill show she attended multiple meetings about the dismissals for months.

She also was among aides who on Feb. 5 helped Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty prepare his testimony for a Senate hearing the next day — during which he may have given Congress incomplete or otherwise misleading information about the circumstances of the firings.

Additionally, Goodling was involved in an April 6, 2006, phone call between the Justice Department and Sen. Pete Domenici (news, bio, voting record), R-N.M., who had complained to the Bush administration and the president about David Iglesias, then the U.S. attorney in Albuquerque.

More specifically, Goodling says senior Justice officials have privately fingered Goodling as providing misleading information to McNulty prior to his testifying. Similar accusations have been made against -- and disputed by -- Kyle Sampson, Gonzales' former chief of staff. So we are facing the prospect of two senior Justice officials accusing two other senior Justice officials of lying.

When they start to eat their own, you know the end is near.

Goodling, Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Bush appointee questioned for partisan moves

It will shock everyone to know that yet another Bush appointee is being investigated for improperly intruding politics into government work.

With GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan and up to 40 regional administrators on hand, J. Scott Jennings, the White House's deputy director of political affairs, gave a PowerPoint presentation on Jan. 26 of polling data about the 2006 elections.

When Jennings concluded his presentation to the GSA political appointees, Doan allegedly asked them how they could "help 'our candidates' in the next elections," according to a March 6 letter to Doan from Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Waxman said in the letter that one method suggested was using "targeted public events, such as the opening of federal facilities around the country."

Is such politicking by bureaucrats with federal money illegal? Yes, although the only penalty is being fired:

On Wednesday, Doan is scheduled to appear before Waxman's committee to answer questions about the videoconference and other issues. The committee is investigating whether remarks made during the videoconference violated the Hatch Act, a federal law that restricts executive-branch employees from using their positions for political purposes. Those found in violation of the act do not face criminal penalties but can be removed from their jobs.

It's not like this is an isolated incident:

The committee is also expected to question Doan about her attempt to give a no-bid job to a friend and professional associate last summer. In addition, the committee plans to look at Waxman's charge that Doan "intervened" in a troubled technology contract with Sun Microsystems that could cost taxpayers millions more than necessary.

Doan's response is to say she's the subject of a vendetta by the department's inspector general. Possible, of course, but one of the first signs that one's defense is weak is when she refuses to address the issues raised and instead attacks her accuser.

But it goes beyond Doan, because the videoconference, you may have noted, was run by J. Scott Jennings, who works for Karl Rove. Raising the possibility that a trail of politicizing government spending could be traced back to Rove himself. So this particular probe is going to be around for a long, long time.

Should it be?

I get very tired of the fixation among certain Democrats on "getting" Rove. Such relentless focus not only detracts from the legitimacy of any real inquiry -- by suggesting it's yet one more witchhunt -- but it also detracts from more serious business and possibly blinds people to actual wrongdoing, because if it can't be tied to Rove they're less interested in following it up.

If something pops up that leads to Rove, fine. But don't waste the public's time until you've got something more than speculation and maybes.

That said, this particular probe seems justified, even if it's not a blockbuster. If Doan violated the Hatch act, she should be fired. If the trail leads to Rove, the Democrats can do cartwheels. But pursue the wrongdoing where it leads; don't get off track because of a desire to finally nail Rove's hide to the wall.

Doan, ethics, politics, midtopia

Gonzales taking even more fire

Alberto Gonzales is now getting fire from every side.

First, another broadside from the conservative Captain Ed:

Is there any other manner in which the Department of Justice can look any more untruthful and deceptive? Apparently so, because the Justice spokesperson now wants to argue about the meaning of the word "involved". Alberto Gonzales told the press on March 13 that he was "not involved in any discussions about what was going on" regarding the terminations. The description adopted by his supporters was that Gonzales acts as a CEO, delegating authority to his staffers and allowing them to act independently, Now we have Tasia Scolinos attempting to sell the notion that the definition of "not involved in any discussions" somehow includes attending the meeting where the decisions were made -- but not absorbing any of the details of the process.

Have we had enough yet? I understand the argument that if we allow the Democrats to bounce Gonzales, they'll just aim for more, but Gonzales made himself the target here with what looks like blatant deception. I don't think we do ourselves any good by defending the serially changing stories coming out of Gonzales' inept administration at Justice. One cannot support an Attorney General who misleads Congress, allows his staffers to mislead Congress, and deceives the American people, regardless of whether an R or a D follows his name or the majority control of Congress....

At this point, the notion that Bush has to retain Gonzales to protect himself and Republicans in general is starting to become absurd. Gonzales inflicted most of this damage on the administration himself, and the longer he remains, the more damage he will do. As Jonah said, it's hard to find a worse example of self-inflicted damage outside of circus tents.

Ooh! A double, at least.

Next up, old hand William F. Buckley:

Of one thing Mr. Bush is manifestly guilty. It is the criminal (in the metaphorical sense) mismanagement of the whole business of the U.S. attorneys. The fault is not personal; it was probably the attorney general and other advisers of the president who took so many clumsy steps. But Mr. Bush's stress on his rights invites a coordinate stress on his responsibilities. "These attorneys," he said, "serve at my pleasure." Right. But presidential pleasures have to rest on defensible grounds.

A nice twist of the knife: it's irresponsible of the president to retain such an incompetent AG. Call it a blooper single over second base; Captain Ed makes it to third.

Up steps clean-up batter Kevin Drum, who lists nine reasons to be skeptical of the AG's account. A selection:

1. Prior to the purge, DOJ lawyers quietly inserted a clause in the Patriot Act that allowed them to appoint new U.S. Attorneys without Senate approval. Why did they do this when their own emails show that the existing system hadn't caused them any problems?

4. DOJ initially lied when asked why they were fired, chalking it up to "performance reasons" even though five of the eight had previously received reviews placing them in the top third of all USAs. Why lie if there's an innocent explanation?

9. DOJ has now had weeks to come up with a plausible story for the firings and they still haven't. This is truly remarkable. Why not just tell the truth? That doesn't take weeks to concoct.

Except for #9, none of these things by themselves would generate much suspicion. Put them all together, though, and you have to be a real dead-end loyalist to believe there's nothing fishy going on. Throw in #9 and even the dead-enders ought to be scratching their chins.

Here's the pitch.... here's the swing.... CRAAACKK!! It's high and deep to centerfield. Looks like an easy out.... NO!! The Bush outfielder bobbles it! Captain Ed crosses the plate! Buckley's rounding third! Drum's going for second! Here's the throw to second.... it's in the dirt! The second baseman misjudges the bounce and is knocked cold! Buckley scores.... Drum scrambles up and races for third as the shortstop chases down the errant ball. He grabs it, turns, throws wildly.... misses third base by a mile! The ball sails into the stand, and Drum walks casually home!

And there you have it, the arc of this scandal. What should have been an easy out for the administration is turning into a home run for its critics. If the administration turns out to have actually done something illegal (other than lying to Congress, I mean), it's hard to imagine that revelation doing any more damage than the parade of bumbling, lies and half-truths that we've been witness to so far.

Perhaps you think Gonzales hasn't done anything wrong. But it's much harder to argue that he doesn't deserve to be fired.

Gonzales, politics, midtopia

New e-mails contradict Gonzales

A new batch of Justice Department e-mails released Friday both fill in the "gap" in the previous releases -- and suggest even more starkly that Gonzales lied about his involvement in the prosecutor firings.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and senior advisers discussed the plan to remove seven United States attorneys at a meeting last Nov. 27, 10 days before the dismissals were carried out, according to a Justice Department calendar entry disclosed Friday.

The previously undisclosed meeting appeared to contradict Mr. Gonzales’s previous statements about his knowledge of the dismissals. He said at a news conference on March 13 that he had not participated in any discussions about the removals, but knew in general that his aides were working on personnel changes involving United States attorneys.

Either Gonzales lied, or he is the most inept and unluckiest attorney general in U.S. history. Because consider how this looks: Gonzales denies involvement in such a major matter. The department releases a flood of e-mails to bolster its case -- but with an 18-day gap. When some e-mails from that gap are finally released, they show that Gonzales was, in fact, involved in the firings.

Could he simply have forgotten the meeting? Yes. Could the "gap" have been unintentional? Yes. But when you put it all together, it looks like the AG lied and then tried to cover it up.

Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Former administration official pleads guilty

Another official goes down in the Abramoff scandal.

Former Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles pleaded guilty Friday to obstruction of justice, becoming the ninth person and the highest-ranking Bush administration official convicted in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.

The former No. 2 official in the Interior Department admitted in federal court that he lied to Senate investigators about his relationship with convicted lobbyist Abramoff, who repeatedly sought Griles' intervention at the agency on behalf of Abramoff's Indian tribal clients.

Griles pleaded guilty to a felony charge for testifying falsely before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee on Nov. 2, 2005, and during an earlier deposition with the panel's investigators on October 20, 2005.

Lying to Congress: not a good idea.

As part of the plea deal, Griles probably gets a 10-month sentence and prosecutors dropped allegations that he improperly helped Abramoff or personally benefited from the relationship.

The underlying charge is relatively minor -- he denied he had an unusually close relationship with Abramoff, even though they had been introduced by his girlfriend. As often happens, the cover up is worse than the crime. Nonetheless, he qualifies for the Hall of Shame.

June 26 update: Griles draws 10 months in prison and a $30,000 fine.

Abramoff, Griles, politics, midtopia

Coulter fallout continues

No update on Ann Coulter's voter fraud case, but her recent name-calling at a conservative conference continues to entertain.

So far, nine papers have dropped her syndicated column. She reportedly has 100 johns, er, clients, most of them small papers. So this has cost her maybe 10 percent of them. She's also lost some big advertisers on her Web site, including AT&T and Verizon.

Some of those papers decided to drop the column after being pressured by a gay-rights group, the Human Rights Campaign. Interestingly, liberal columnist Ted Rall opposes the campaign -- Perhaps because some of the campaign rhetoric is obnoxious:

In a Wednesday letter announcing his organization's campaign targeting individual newspapers, HRC President Joe Solmonese wrote: "Yesterday, we asked you to send a message to [President and Editor] Lee Salem ... of Universal Press Syndicate. ... You leaped into action and sent over 20,000 e-mails to Lee demanding Universal ... drop Coulter’s column. By responding so quickly, you sent a strong message that our community will not stand by silently while UPS continues to serve as a platform for hateful and destructive language in the media.

"As you may know by now, UPS has flatly defied the protests of thousands of fair-minded Americans nationwide by refusing to stop distributing Coulter’s column. ...

Bleh. Coulter is a troll, but whenever someone starts using "fair-minded Americans" to justify suppressing a viewpoint, I break out in hives. Bash her for what she says; even boycotts of advertisers is okay. But don't try to get her quashed just because you don't like what she says.

civil liberties, Coulter, politics, midtopia

Gonzales roundup

The Justice Department released 3,000 pages of documents related to the firing of U.S. prosecutors, hoping to persuade critics that the firings were not politically motivated.

(For the raw document dump, go here.)

It's a lot to digest, so not a lot of details just yet. They seem to show a mix of political and performance concerns for at least some of the fired prosecutors, but the full context will take some time to emerge.

Meanwhile, as support for Gonzales continues to erode, Politico is reporting that the White House is already searching for a possible replacement for Gonzales -- something strenuously denied by the White House. Among the names being bandied about:

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and White House anti-terrorism coordinator Frances Townsend. Former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson is a White House prospect. So is former solicitor general Theodore B. Olson, but sources were unsure whether he would want the job.

On Monday night, Republican officials said two other figures who are being seriously considered are Securities and Exchange Committee Chairman Chris Cox, who is former chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee and is popular with conservatives; and former Attorney General William P. Barr, who served under President George H.W. Bush from 1991 to 1993 and is now general counsel of Verizon Communications.

Then there's this:

Republican sources also disclosed that it is now a virtual certainty that Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty, whose incomplete and inaccurate congressional testimony about the prosecutors helped precipitate the crisis, will also resign shortly. Officials were debating whether Gonzales and McNulty should depart at the same time or whether McNulty should go a day or two after Gonzales.

Separately, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to repeal a Patriot Act provision that let Gonzales name replacement prosecutors without bothering with Senate confirmation -- a situation that helped raise Senate hackles when the firings first came to light.

It almost doesn't matter if the firings turn out to have been political or not. The bungled response, the attempts to marginalize or ignore Congress, the history of poor management and poor legal judgement -- all spell doom for Gonzales. Or doom for Bush's policy initiatives, if he chooses to retain his embattled AG.

Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Harmful books

What are the most dangerous books of the last two centuries? Here's one answer as compiled by conservatives, hence the lack of a single title by Ann Coulter.

The list, and my commentary:

1. Communist Manifesto. Okay, fair enough. Debate over the ideals and logic behind it aside, attempts to implement this little gem led to the deaths of tens of millions of people worldwide. Communism remains a nice ideal (to some) but a demonstrably horrible form of government.

2. Mein Kampf. This one's a little murkier. Yes, Adolf was a pretty bad guy, and as such perhaps his book deserves the same treatment as the Communist Manifesto, and for the same reason. Except that his book played almost no role in his rise to power. It didn't start selling until he actually took power and it became mandatory reading. Hitler bad? No question. But this ranking seems to give his rambling and incoherent book way too much credit.

3. Quotations from Chairman Mao. Another entry chosen for the same reasons as the first two. While a reasonable choice in itself, it again points up the misplaced credit given to "Mein Kampf." Because this book, like the Communist Manifesto, again led directly to myriad deaths and persecutions thanks to its influence during the Cultural Revolution.

4. The Kinsey Report. And now we start to stray into really bizarro conservative territory. After three ideologies that killed hundreds of millions, the next most harmful book is .... a study of American sexual practices. The stated reason? "The reports were designed to give a scientific gloss to the normalization of promiscuity and deviancy." Yes, I can see where that's nearly as harmful as killing or exiling millions of people.... Was Kinsey guilty of ethical and scientific lapses? Yes. Fourth most harmful book in modern history? C'mon.

5. Democracy and Education. An influential book that advocated schools spend less time teaching "character development" and memorizing facts, and more time teaching kids to think. While waves of educational fads have indeed weakened education, this was not such a fad. It makes the argument that a healthy democracy requires an educated and thinking populace more than a pliant population capable of regurgitating facts but less able to think for themselves. This is hardly radical; one commonly cited advantage of American students is their ability to think creatively, unlike their counterparts in Japan and India, for example, where students outscore us on standardized tests but often find themselves ill-prepared for more than technical jobs because while they have all the tools, they never really learned how to apply them in new ways. This may be why the most devastating thing the listmakers can think of to say about it is that it "helped nurture the Clinton generation."

6. Das Kapital. Marx/Engel's other book is apparently less dangerous than either sexuality or public education, perhaps because it's more of a critique of capitalism than an actual proposed alternative like the "Communist Manifesto." One can argue that this founding document of modern socialism contributed to the philosophical underpinnings of communism, and its calls for the abolition of private property (the full Marxist/Communist form of socialism) are offensive both morally and economically. But on the other hand socialist activists have produced much actual good, such as the five-day workweek, paid vacation and workplace safety laws. One can argue that modern capitalism is both stronger and more democratic thanks to Marx's critique, however unrealistic his alternative.

7. The Feminine Mystique. Another conservative pet peeve, feminism, nails down the #7 spot. While Betty Friedan was quite militant by today's standards -- as almost all pioneers are -- the only way one can say this book was harmful is if one also argues that it was okay to force women into subservient, gender-defined social roles. Friedan, whatever her faults or excesses, laid the groundwork for today's society, in which women are (horrors!!) allowed to choose their own life and career path. How terrible.

8. The Course of Positive Philosophy. This book is harmful because it outlines a nontheistic belief system. No, seriously. That's why it's so dangerous, because it describes a philosophy that doesn't require belief in God. If anyone was still taking this list seriously, hopefully you've stopped now.

9. Beyond Good and Evil. The infamous classic by Freidrich Nietsche argues that belief in God is a weakness, but mostly it's taken to task for its amoral, "might makes right" philosophy. I'd argue that this book is far more deserving of the #2 spot instead of "Mein Kampf", because it had more direct influence on Nazi ideology (indeed, it informed "Mein Kampf").

10. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. The classic economic text by John Maynard Keynes, which advocated government regulation of the economy. It was indeed hugely influential. But it is harmful only if you dislike the economic course the world has taken since the Great Depression, because Keynesian economics are the rules by which the world operates today. The most notable sign of his influence is the existence of the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee, which raises and lowers interest rates to even out business cycles -- something it has done with remarkable success for nearly 80 years. The overheated booms and destructive panics of the 19th Century are largely things of the past. Was he 100% right on everything? Of course not. But on balance his theories seem to have done more good than harm.

The Honorable Mention list is even sillier, containing books such as "On Liberty" by John Stuart Mill, "Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin, "Unsafe at Any Speed" by Ralph Nader, "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carlson and "Introduction to Psychoanalysis" by Freud. I guess these are harmful if you think personal liberty, evolution, consumer safety, concern for the environment and the study and treatment of mental dysfunction are bad things. Although in the latter two cases there are legitimate criticisms of the authors for being excessive in their concern and incorrect in certain assertions, I think it would be difficult to argue that either Carson or Freud did more harm than good.

To be fair, it can be difficult to put together a good list of "harmful" books. Part of this is our national commitment to free speech; it's hard to argue that we should not be exposed to the ideas in "Beyond Good and Evil" or even "Mein Kampf," if only so they can be debated (and largely refuted) in the open light of day. So I have no other titles to offer in replacement of those above, simply because I'm not given to making such lists.

Perhaps that's the lesson to be imparted here. Ideas are not harmful; applications are. We should hold Hitler, not Nietsche, responsible for the National Socialist movement. We should hold the Soviet authorities, not Marx, responsible for the compound disaster that was the Soviet Union. Just like we don't hold Adam Smith responsible for the excesses of pure capitalism, or hold Ayn Rand responsible for the more lunatic Libertarian fringe, or hold Jesus responsible for the actions of the religious right. A book may give dullards a faux-intellectual hook on which to hang their actions; but their actions cannot be blamed on the book, any more than the killing can be blamed on the gun.

books, politics, midtopia

The case against Gonzales

The WaPo's Andrew Cohen has an excellent four-part series outlining why Alberto Gonzales needs to go, and who should replace him.

Part I • Part II • Part III • Part IV

Cohen's basic argument:

1. Gonzales has been a crony all his life, and remained one as AG in abdication of his role as the people's attorney. He was an enabler for Bush rather than a counselor. Even Janet Reno showed an independent bone or two; Gonzales has none.

2. As a lawyer and executive, he's mediocre or worse. Cohen cites some well-known examples from the White House, but also some others from his tenure in Texas -- such as a failure to tell then-Gov. Bush, when commenting on a defendant's clemency petition, that the defense lawyer for a death-row inmate had slept through most of the jury selection process. Several other examples lay out Gonzales' legal incompetence -- or, alternatively, his willingness to ignore plain law when he finds it inconvenient.

3. With all the scandals popping up around him, there's no compelling reason to keep him. Various observers, of various political stripes, describe him as an "empty suit", a "lightweight" who is "in over his head." He's not the kind of AG you go to the mat for.

As far as replacements, here is where Cohen makes a notable misstep. He surveys the field and proposes... Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor in the Libby case. That just seems out of left field to me, and it's not going to happen in any event. I'm not qualified to judge the field, but surely he could have done better.

But the first three parts are a compelling, if somewhat partisan, read. Give 'em a look.

Gonzales, politics, midtopia