The dirge of the purge

March 13, 2007

The news items about the prosecutor purge scandal have been flying fast and furious today, so perhaps it’s worthwhile to pause and consider what we’ve learned since the morning.

* The New York Times reported that the White House “was deeply involved in the decision late last year to dismiss federal prosecutors, including some who had been criticized by Republican lawmakers.”

* The Washington Post has emails between the White House, the Justice Department, and Republican members of Congress on the coordination of the purge.

* Dem senators are pissed about having been lied to by Justice Department officials.

* An “associate” of Karl Rove told the NYT that Rove only “learned in November that the prosecutors were being replaced.” The facts show otherwise.

* The Justice Department misled lawmakers about Rove’s role, as well.

* Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has asked for the “immediate appointment of a Special Prosecutor to investigate potential criminal violations related to the recent dismissals of eight U.S. Attorneys. Recent revelations indicate that a top-ranking Department of Justice official knew that statements made by top Department officials were not true. Clearly, the Department of Justice cannot investigate itself and prosecute the misconduct of DOJ officials.”

* Alberto Gonzales insists he was out of the loop.

* Chuck Schumer doesn’t think much of Gonzales’ explanation.

* When Gonzales told lawmakers in 2005 that all Bush-appointed U.S. Attorneys would be ‘Senate-confirmed,’ that wasn’t true, either.

* Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) seems willing to throw Gonzales under the bus.

* The right is still using a bogus “Clinton did it” argument, and the media is picking up on it.

* Some in the media are, however, willing to admit they should have taken the story more seriously.

* Less than a month before a Justice Department official told Congress that U.S. Attorney David Iglesias was fired for “performance related” concerns, the Attorney General agreed to be a job reference for the guy.

* Purged U.S. Attorney John McKay was “stunned” to hear that the White House was directly involved in passing along complaints that he didn’t investigate charges of voter fraud aggressively enough in 2004.

* The House Judiciary Committee has made the purge documents available online — parts one, two, three, and four. (all are .pdf documents)

Not bad for one scandal in one day, wouldn’t you say?

The dam of denial is not enough to hold back the flood waters of truth that are about to inundate this Administration. -Kevo

  • If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the latest post on my blog. Was Cheney anticipating something? Has Bush been doing the same, resulting in the reports that he has not been feeling so well?

  • It’s only a matter of time before their defense becomes, “Yeah, so what?”

    I’m sure to Gonzales/Bush/Rove, utilizing the nation’s prosecutors to ensure partisan advantage is a perfectly acceptable way of doing business.(Heck, once you’ve legalized torture, it’s all downhill from there.) This partisan dirty-tricks crap is how the nation has been run for the last 6 years—why would these jokers feel the need to apologize now? and to Chuck Schumer, no less.

    the usual meatheads will try to portray this as another example of Dems trying to “criminalize” politics, just wait.

  • Great summary. BTW – I just checked out two days worth of posting at the Corner (I wouldn’t recommend the experience). Not one – not one! – post about this. No post from KLo belittling liberal blogs. No post from J-Pod trotting out the “Clinton Did it Too” spin. Nothing. They’re paralyzed in making a response. I guess they haven’t gotten the talking points from the White House yet.

  • I understand CREW’s point, but they need to back off until the Congressional Dems have decided on the advisability of a special prosecutor. There is a huge downside: the special is still appointed by R’s and will likely be an R. In the meantime, the criminal investigation provides a great excuse to not talk to Congress without immunity. My sense is that aggressive Congressional Dems should get everything they can first, and only then turn this over to a special prosecutor.

  • Doesn’t that Fitz guy know a thing or two about the White dealings ?
    I nominate Fitz for the job of Special Prosecutor.

    Cheney has to be linked some way, maybe he was the one who got the goods into the Patriot Act. No way Cheney walks away from this clean, bet.

    Does anyone else feel guilty ? It’s nice to them get caught, but man, this is pretty much going to clog up the actual governing for a long time. It’s like we need a shadow Congress to investigate all the misdeeds of the past six years. Here we are bogged down in 2 major scandals (at least), and all of them are fresh, we have yet to even think about the investigations we planned right after the elections.

    It’s like they threw so many scandals at us, we can not keep up, much less go forward with our original election platforms. What about the war, and health care, and over-sight, and medicare, and on and on ??? Well the war is getting looked at pretty well, but we had so many hopes and now we are just playing cops and robbers and probably will for long past 2008.

    No way Bush doesn’t go down as worse President ever and boss of worse administration ever.

  • Can’t Congress write a law enabling it to appoint its own special prosecutor? Or would we have to ask the Minority’s permission (“pretty please on bended knees”) before doing so?

    Excellent summary, CB. Thanks.

  • Maybe we could get the CIA to do its extraordinary rendition thing—haul Gonzo to a nice, quiet secret prison, and give him a good “Patriot-izing.” Odds are that before this whole thing is over, Gonzo won’t be the highest member of the administration to go….

  • Benjamin @#4 said, It’s only a matter of time before their defense becomes, “Yeah, so what?”

    Actually, they’ve already done it. NPR’s Morning Edition this morning quoted the WH spokesbitch as saying, the firings “were perfectly appropriate and within our discretion.”

  • I would be flabbergasted if THIS is the scandal that takes down the POTUS and his circle. These loons should have already been impeached for so many things, half a dozen times over. And the AG is among the worst. And to think I was so negative about Ashcroft for so long [for good reason], but Gonzalez manages to make a guy who lost an election to a dead person look good. How does he do that?

    And will somebody tell the Democrats they won an election in November, and to get to work already!

  • Did Gonzalez learn the term “out of the loop” from the first Bush??? These guys are so up each others butt that no way anyone is out of the loop they are creating.

  • “All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working-hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice.”

    George Orwell, “1984”

    The American voting bloc is waking up, although it is not yet awake and fully aware of what has been done, what continues to be done in its name. Those who suggest that if this is what takes them down, it’ll be rich indeed after the scale of their previous misdeeds are right – but I’ll take it. It’s a pleasure to see the baffled rage on Bush’s face as he realizes that wrapping himself in the Stars and Stripes until he looks like some kind of bizarre super-patriot taco is not working the way it used to.

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