Crisis in the White House

The rot inside the Bush Administration and particularly inside the White House is becoming apparent for all to see. The more questions that are asked, the more rot begins to show thus leading to even more questions. And holes in testimony the size of barn doors that require yet another series of questions, including questions about why Congress and the American people were lied to in the first place. The fertile minds of people like Karl Rove can no longer keep track of all the lies and spin being put out by the White House. The next few weeks are going to be interesting.

Let's start with a minor problem: Paul Wolfowitz and his crumbling presidency at the World Bank. Let's keep in mind that Wolfowitz was never known as an able administrator. He is a theorist; that's his calling card. Being president of the World Bank requires a certain amount of administrative ability. And Wolfowitz apparently appropriated the Bush model: arrogant, a small circle of loyal advisers, a loose system of ethics, 24/7 spin, blaming everyone but those responsible, etc. What Wolfowitz has lacked is a compliant press and a compliant Congress willing to look the other way; and Wolfowitz's lack of administrative experience made it difficult for him to sweep some of his transgressions under the rug. Now nothing is ever all one way, but defending Wolfotwitz has become difficult to do, if one is honest about what is happening.

The US Attorney scandal, the dysfunctional behavior at the Justice Department and what appears to be the direct involvement of the White House in ordering the firings for purely partisan political reasons is simply getting larger and spilling over into other issues, including what has been the simmering but always disturbing NSA spying story. Glenn Greenwald of Unclaimed Territory has some thoughts about James Comey's Congressional testimony:

...yesterday's hearing underscores how unresolved the entire NSA matter is -- how little we know (but ought to know) about what actually happened and how little accountability there has been for some of the most severe and blatant acts of presidential lawbreaking in the country's history.

(snip)

Comey then made clear that he and Ashcroft met, determined that the NSA program lacked legal authority, and agreed "on a course of action," one whereby the DOJ would refuse to certify the legality of the NSA program. Yet even once Ashcroft and Comey made clear that the program had no legal basis (i.e., was against the law), the President ordered it to continue anyway. As Comey said: "The program was reauthorized without us and without a signature from the Department of Justice attesting as to its legality."

Amazingly, the President's own political appointees -- the two top Justice Department officials, including one (Ashcroft) who was known for his "aggressive" use of law enforcement powers in the name of fighting terrorism and at the expense of civil liberties -- were so convinced of its illegality that they refused to certify it and were preparing, along with numerous other top DOJ officials, to resign en masse once they learned that the program would continue notwithstanding the President's knowledge that it was illegal.

The overarching point here, as always, is that it is simply crystal clear that the President consciously and deliberately violated the law and committed multiple felonies by eavesdropping on Americans in violation of the law.

Though unproven, there has been some speculation that the NSA was sometimes used for purposes other than monitoring al Qaida type terrorists. For example, John Bolton apparently seemed to know too much about conversations people in the State Department were having with the North Koreans under Colin Powell's direction; Bolton was something of a Cheney mole who reported various items back to the vice president's office in their dysfunctional and bizarre political war with Bush's own State Department. Laura Rozen of War and Piece raises a related issue:

A reader raises a good point. Why was FBI director Mueller and the FBI so involved in Comey's decision-thinking on the NSA warrantless domestic spying program? Was this about a separate component of the program, that involved the FBI spying without warrants on Americans? Not just the NSA? And think of the time too: mid March 2004 - a few months before the presidential elections.

(snip)

Comey was more than adamant in his testimony yesterday that these Republican appointee conservative justice department officials -- he, Ashcroft, Goldsmith, Philbin -- could find no legal basis for the program. As Marty Lederman says, imagine just how bad it must have been.

...how bad it must have been. Hmm. Whatever the reason was. Keep in mind that some of the US Attorneys who were fired were Republican appointees who balked at some of the unethical things that the Bush Administration (and apparently some members of Congress) was asking them to do.

The questions and the scandals are growing. Bush can only get out from under the growing clouds hanging over the White House with the compliant cooperation of the media. So, not just the White House, but an overly complacent Washington media will be under close scrutiny in the coming weeks.

Carol Lam Outstanding Attorney of the Year

Republican Carol Lam is the one who prosecuted and convicted Rep. Duke Cunningham whose corruption and shennigans was uncovered by the conservative newspaper, San Diego Union Tribune (with later help from the North County Times). Cunningham was not working alone and apparently Carol Lam's investigations were getting too close for the comfort of the White House (there's a potential link to Dick Cheney, for example) and she was one of the attorneys fired after the November elections for purely political reasons.

Carol Lam's peers in San Diego, a largely Republican county, selected her as the outstanding attorney of the year; Truthout carries the story:

Carol Lam, one of eight former U.S. attorneys across the country whose dismissals have ignited a political firestorm and calls for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, has been named outstanding attorney of the year by the San Diego County Bar Association, the organization announced Wednesday afternoon.

(snip)

Lam, a senior vice president and legal counsel for Qualcomm, Inc., since February, said Wednesday that the award is "a great honor."

"I'd like to be accepting the award on behalf of the United States attorney's office," Lam said. "The attorneys in that office surely deserve it more than I do."

In a news release announcing the award for Lam and 10 other awards, the bar association said Lam "has demonstrated the highest level of ethics and professionalism and fought government corruption and corporate misdeeds."

While US attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president, it should be noted that there traditionally has been a fire wall between the activities of the US attorneys and the political arm of the White House. There has been no such firings on such a scale in recent decades.

The obvious interference of the White House in Dept. of Justice matters is currently being investigated by several committees in Congress. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales remains under a cloud of suspicion and discredit as he continues to refuse to provide an adequate explanation of why eight US attorneys were fired and seems unable to recall the circumstances of their firing. He has been asked by Congress to provide a full answer for the dozens of occassions he told them that he couldn't recall or didn't know specific details of the firings despite the fact that e-mails and testimony exist showing that the Attorney General was indeed involved. The scandals of the George W. Bush White House continue.

More on Paul Wolfowitz and Alberto Gonzales

Four years ago, when I first started devoting considerable time to writing about Bush's flawed war plan for Iraq and the various wrongdoing that was coming to light, I was somewhat in despair because too many people writing about these things on the left were so shrill it was highly unlikely that they would get the attention of most Americans who very much needed to know about the nonsense that was becoming increasingly obvious. And the mainstream media was either drinking the Kool Aid like Judy Miller of The New York Times or they were shrugging as if they were watching some vaguely interesting but ultimately unimportant drama (Ted Koppel, as one example, though normally a very fine reporter was infuriating at times: it's a business, it's process, we have to make money, blah, blah, blah). Times have indeed changed. I don't know how much hope there is to change things but at least in 2007, as bad as things are, there is a glimmer of hope. When people begin to recognize we have a problem there is always a glimmer of hope because if you have the facts, there is a chance you can begin to change things for the better.

Indeed, things are bad and there are a growing number of people focusing on the catastrophe that is the Bush presidency. Frank Rich of The New York Times has an article (via Truthout) on some of this and, like me, he's now unavoidably using multiple adjectives and descriptive nouns that still aren't adequate for describing Bush and his presidency (bold emphasis mine):

...the president is also hobbled by the Iraq cancer's metastasis - the twin implosions of Alberto Gonzales and Paul Wolfowitz. Technically, both men have been pilloried for sins unrelated to the war. The attorney general has repeatedly been caught changing his story about the extent of his involvement in purging eight federal prosecutors. The Financial Times caught the former deputy secretary of defense turned World Bank president privately dictating the extravagant terms of a State Department sinecure for a crony (a k a romantic partner) that showers her with more take-home pay than Condoleezza Rice.

Yet each man's latest infractions, however serious, are mere misdemeanors next to their roles in the Iraq war. What's being lost in the Beltway uproar is the extent to which the lying, cronyism and arrogance showcased by the current scandals are of a piece with the lying, cronyism and arrogance that led to all the military funerals that Mr. Bush dares not attend. Having slept through the fraudulent selling of the war, Washington is still having trouble confronting the big picture of the Bush White House. Its dense web of deceit is the deliberate product of its amoral culture, not a haphazard potpourri of individual blunders.

In another article on Truthout, Elizabeth de la Vega, "a former federal prosecutor with over 20 years' experience, was a member of the Organized Crime Strike Force and Chief of the San Jose Branch of the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California," explains what's supposed to happen and why the Justice Department under Alberto Gonzalez and his White House handlers has become so dysfunctional and politicized:

Then there's the "Urgent Report" system instituted at DOJ in recent years. Section T3-18.200 of the US Attorney's Manual requires US attorneys' offices to send immediate reports to the highest levels of the Attorney General's Office whenever there are "major developments" - defined to include even procedural motions - in "important cases," which include any cases that present a "high likelihood of coverage in news media, or Congressional interest."

For cases involving public figures, the US Attorney's Manual requires that "appropriate officials, including the assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division, the associate attorney general, the deputy attorney general and the attorney general" be advised of the initiation of any case "in which public figures or entities are subjects of the investigation." Bottom line? The attorney general is notified immediately, not just when charges are brought in a public corruption case, but when the file is opened and every time that any activity, even procedural, occurs in the case. It was precisely such an Urgent Report that former San Diego US Attorney Carol Lam used to notify the Attorney General's Office on May 10, 2006 that search warrants were going to be conducted in the Randy "Duke" Cunningham case. The next day, of course, was when Alberto Gonzales's top aide wrote an email talking about the "very real problem we have right now" with Carol Lam.

Think about this for a moment. San Diego County is a generally conservative county, mostly Republican, with several Republican-leaning newspapers, including the San Diego Union Tribune, which broke the story on Duke Cunningham. The last time I looked most Republicans frown on bribery and corruption as much as anyone else, particularly when it is so blatant as it was in the case of Duke Cunningham. When Carol Lam, a Republican by the way, opened an investigation into Duke Cunningham, much of the evidence of corruption was already laid out by the newspapers. Opening the case and beginning the investigation was a no brainer and would be obvious in virtually any district in the nation where there is respect for the law. But Alberto Gonzales's top aide suddenly said they have a problem. If you're a criminal or trying to politicize everything, I suppose that would be one way of looking at it.

We Need Special Prosecutor to Babysit Bush His Last Two Years

Almost every day a new scandal breaks out that involves the Bush Administration. I can understand the arguments that impeachment is not politically viable in the current environment but it's clearly time for Congress to appoint a special prosecutor. It's apparent that Alberto Gonzales and the entire Justice Department are so utterly under the thrall of the White House that we can no longer expect an independent Justice Department to investigate wrong-doing by government officials since those same officials are often politically protected by the White House.

On Slate, Dahlia Lithwick points to a revelation at the Alberto Gonzales hearings that makes clear the integrity of the White House is at all-time low:

One of the finest moments comes when Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., busts out a big, big chart. Which happens after almost everyone has gone home. The chart compares the Clinton protocol for appropriate contacts between the White House and the DoJ on pending criminal cases with the Bush protocol. According to Whitehouse, the Clinton protocol authorized just four folks at the White House to chat with three folks at Justice. The chart had four boxes talking to three boxes. Out comes the Bush protocol, and now 417 different people at the White House have contacts about pending criminal cases with 30-some people at Justice. You can just see zillions of small boxes nattering back and forth. It seems that just about everyone in the White House, including the guys in the mailroom, had a vote on ongoing criminal matters.

It's not the job of the Justice Department to do the political bidding of the President; it is the job of the Justice Department to uphold the laws of this nation and to guard those laws with reasonable caution from political interference. The United States became a nation when King George III sought to subvert the law (he, the king, in his own estimation, being the law—or 'the Decider') for his own political ends. We should not forget that Benjamin Franklin threw in with the break from England after being deliberately humiliated by what amounted to a political lynching by the king's ministers and cronies. Respect for the law and putting those laws in writing with a document that outlined what the government could do and not do was what our country was founded on; deciding on a republic was simply part of how those laws were to be implemented, changed from time to time and respected without arbitrary change by those who are the most powerful.

Washington and the media can no longer avoid or make light of the fact that the White House over six years has repeatedly been violating hundreds of laws with impunity, and in some cases, the violations have occurred quite literally millions of times as in the illegal use of e-mails on Republican National Committee accounts as a way of avoiding legal requirements to keep track of government business from the White House—the people's business, mind you.

The New York Times has an editorial on the Alberto Gonzales hearings:

If Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had gone to the Senate yesterday to convince the world that he ought to be fired, it’s hard to imagine how he could have done a better job, short of simply admitting the obvious: that the firing of eight United States attorneys was a partisan purge.

Mr. Gonzales came across as a dull-witted apparatchik incapable of running one of the most important departments in the executive branch.

I first used the word 'apparatchik' back in 2003 on the AOL message boards. I was criticized for being shrill which generally was not the case with most of my posts at the time. Since I was trying to reach moderates and perhaps even rational conservatives, I dropped the term though I felt it accurately described the political public relations types that seemed to be orchestrating so many press releases and conferences during that period. When The New York Times starts using such a term, we know, four years later, that there has been a sea change in how President Bush is viewed by a majority of Americans these days.

We have a crisis and the only proper way to deal with that crisis is to hold George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and many of the top Bush Administration advisers accountable. It's time for a special prosecutor—the blatant corruption at the top of the Justice Department makes that evident. Congress needs to appoint a special prosecutor who can begin to restore a sense of integrity where in fact it must exist: among those who are charged with upholding the law. What is apparent is that the US Attorneys who were fired, although they were all Republicans appointed by Bush, were largely fired for not doing the political bidding of an increasingly corrupt White House. It is time to recognize that we have a problem. Our democracy is bleeding. And Congress must act.

Alberto Gonzales: Mayberry Mafia Consiglieri, Part II

We are the most powerful nation in the world. The world looks to Washington for leadership. Or at least it did once upon a time. Whether Republican or Democrat, we would like to think that the best and the brightest are representing our nation and that there is real respect for the law. Our government is not perfect but there are standards and those standards are expected to be upheld and when they are not, there are supposed to be consequences, not just public relations moves before we see more of the same. Something is seriously wrong in Washington and most of it is visible in the White House. The best and the brightest do not appear to be members of the Bush Administration. The best and the brightest are clearly not leading in the White House. And the scandals and the corruption and the gross incompetence continue.

Alberto Gonzales is an embarrassment and should resign. His testimony today was so ridiculous it makes you cringe. TPM Muckraker has the full coverage (here's the link to this week's coverage: TPM Muckraker April 15 to April 21); there's truly not much to add. Congress is obligated to keep hammering at Alberto Gonzales and others of his top staffers until some satisfactory answers are forthcoming or resignations take place. The American people simply cannot afford the Department of Justice to become totally corrupt. This is scandal that comes straight out of the White House. Alberto Gonzales is doing the bidding of Karl Rove and the bidding of George W. Bush. It is embarrassing to our history. It is embarrassing to present this scandal to the world.

But the scandals go on. There's Paul Wolfowitz, his girlfriend and Wolfowitz's hypocritical assertion that he wants the World Bank to be free of corruption (selectively, no doubt, and to the advantage of the Bush and his friends, apparently). Maureen Dowd of the New York Times has this to say in her latest column:

The weekend meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were consumed with the question of how the bank chief could fight corruption while indulging in cronyism. Who could focus on a weak yen when you had a weak Wolfie with a strong yen for Shaha? In addition to the story about Paul Wolfowitz's giving his girlfriend, Shaha Ali Raza, a promotion and a $60,000 raise because he felt guilty that she had to be transferred from the World Bank to the State Department when he took over, the New York Times reported on Tuesday on more imperialist hanky-panky.

...when Wolfie was No. 2 at the Pentagon, the office of his consigliere, Douglas Feith, directed a private contractor to hire Riza, then at the World Bank, to spend a month traveling to Iraq to study ways to set up the new government.

(snip)

As they rushed to war, the neocons delighted in blowing off international institutions and diplomats, treating them as impediments and whiners. So it only made sense that Wolfie wouldn't hesitate to blow off rules he didn't like once he began running an international institution himself.

(snip)

Astonishingly, W., Wolfie, Dick Cheney and the Prince of Darkness himself, Richard Perle, have learned nothing from their mistakes of blindness and hubris, except to sweep them under the bed and indulge in more blindness and hubris.

(snip)

Shouldn't Rummy and Cheney have followed their own advice: You go to war against the country you have, not the one you imagine?

Hmm, that's not a bad last line but I would add one more: shouldn't we have a president who tackles real problems and not the ones he imagines? Of course, that would require a level of integrity the current occupant of the White House does not have.

Let's end by focusing once more on the Department of Justice, run by Bush yes-man, Alberto Gonzalez. Steve Soto of The Left Coaster provides the details:

It is a basic operating principle of Rovian political theory to cover up your own weaknesses and vulnerabilities by redirecting attention towards attacking your opponent on the same issues, and keeping that opponent on defense. We know pretty clearly now what this GOP mumbo-jumbo about voting fraud was all about. [Linked to the McClatchy Washington Bureau]:

For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates.

The administration intensified its efforts last year as President Bush's popularity and Republican support eroded heading into a midterm battle for control of Congress, which the Democrats won.

This is the president who read speech after speech about bringing 'democracy' to the Middle East. This is not pretty and I take no pleasure in saying it. We have a liar in the White House. We have an incompetent in the White House. We have a rigid ideologue in the White House. We have a hypocrite in the White House. Quite clearly, we have a problem. The more Bush's shortcomings and failures become evident, the more Bush is compelled to wave his arms and talk arrogantly and belligerently about his authority as 'the Decider.' He is a failed president whose flaws become more evident every day. Congress, the media and the various members of our government must keep Bush in check and keep the government running until Bush is either impeached (I know, not likely) or until he leaves office. And Americans need to think long and hard about how a flawed man like George W. Bush became president in the first place.

Alberto Gonzales: Mayberry Mafia Consiglieri

Despite the fact that the Attorney General of the United States is a political appointee, the Attorney General is expected to uphold the laws of the United States and not bend them for political purposes. We know today's Republican leaders have nothing to run on and can only win by raising the most money, suppressing votes and smearing their opponents; that is too often the essence of today's Republican Party despite a rank and file who are generally honest and hardworking (though all too often, not particularly insightful about the nature of their leadership).

The firewall that is supposed to exist between the president and the attorney general has completely broken down. Alberto Gonzales is the consiglieri of George W. Bush and is quick to do the president's bidding even when it is against the law or not in the interest of the American people or our democracy.

The best source for the scandals coming out of the White House and Justice Department continue to be Talking Points Memo and TPM Muckraker. There are a number of others to read but I find myself returning repeatedly to Dan Froomkin of White House Watch who today has an incisive paragraph that summarizes Alberto Gonzales' current defense:

Judging from his prepared statement and his Washington Post op-ed, Gonzales will continue to insist that, while he doesn't really know why he fired the attorneys, he simply cannot believe that he did so for improper reasons.

Alberto Gonzales is either a fool who needs to be removed or a criminal who needs to be removed. I'm tired of playing guessing games with administration figures who suffer repeatedly from amnesia and outright stonewalling while things keep happening that stink to high heaven. I hope members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, feel the same way. It is time to act.

Majority of American Say Gonzales Should Go

We need to believe in the integrity of our government and Bush and his closest advisers have given us far too many reasons in the last six years to believe that integrity has been put on a low priority for any number of reasons that are not pretty. I've been watching Purgegate closely for the past several weeks and Alberto Gonzales fits the cookie metaphor perfectly. Asked if he's taken cookies from the cookie jar, he smiles innocently into the camera with his hands behind his back, rocks from side to side and, while he denies having taking any cookies, a steady trickle of crumbs can be seen landing behind him on the floor as he tries to get rid of the evidence without entirely succeeding. In this case, the cookie crumbs are e-mails and contradictory accounts given by other people.

One of the ridiculous aspects coming out during this scandal are the number of people who have been hired openly or sometimes surreptiously by the Bush Administration who are not qualified for their jobs but are hired anyway because of their perceived loyalty to Bush and his right wing causes. We have lawyers being hired that are from fourth-rate schools such as Pat Robertson's college. But a more insiduous issue that has emerged is that the White House is deliberately using non-White House e-mail accounts to avoid accountability (one wonders how many e-mails went back and forth between convicted felon Jack Abramoff and the White House after all). If we care about the rule of law, if we care about the US Constitution, if we care about transparency from people who work for us, this is no way to run a government.

Since 2004, a growing number of Americans have been catching on to George W. Bush. The 2006 elections are evidence a loud and clear message to Washington that we expect better. But there are still Americans who don't get it. The Los Angeles Times has a poll on Alberto Gonzales and US attorney firings:

Most Americans believe Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales should resign because of the controversy over his office's firing of federal prosecutors, and a big majority want White House aides to testify under oath about the issue, the Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg Poll has found.

The survey, conducted Thursday through Monday, found that 53% said Gonzales should step down because he claimed he had no role in the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys last year — an account later contradicted by Justice Department documents and congressional testimony by his top assistant.

Senate and House Democratic leaders have asked White House aides to testify under oath about the firings, in part to answer questions about the roles of Gonzales and Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political strategist. Bush has rejected those requests, but the poll found that 74% of the public believes his aides, including Rove, should comply.

Even among Republicans, 49% said they thought the aides should testify; 43% said they should not.

I'm astounded that 43% of Republicans still think it's okay for Justice of Department officials and White House staffers doing official government business not to testify under oath when serious questions have been raised about their performance. Ultimately, the American people determine the rules, not Bush and his advisers. It is the job of Bush and his advisers to execute the laws, not rewrite them at their convenience, or use them or not use them at their pleasure. When national security is involved, we sometimes are too slow to hold government officials accountable, but when pure politics is involved and officials are not being straight with the American people, we have a right and a responsibility to demand a complete explanation...under oath.

Officials who swear to uphold the US Constitution are expected to uphold the law and to have the highest integrity. There have been too many outright lies and contradictions coming out of the White House and Justice Department for them to hide behind 'executive privilege' or to invoke bizarre interpretations of the law that seem to be pulled out of the dark ages, or out of their hats. Fortunately, 74% of the public believes the officials should testify under oath. There's still hope for our democracy.

Growing White House/Justice Dept. Scandal

The liaison between the White House and Justice Department is taking the fifth; here's the AP story by Laurie Kellman in the Houston Chronicle:

Monica Goodling, a senior Justice Department official involved in the firings of federal prosecutors, will refuse to answer questions at upcoming Senate hearings, citing Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination, her lawyer said Monday.

(snip)

Goodling was Gonzales' senior counsel and White House liaison until she took a leave of absence earlier this month. She was subpoenaed last week by the Senate Judiciary Committee along with several of Gonzales' other top aides.

Note the sudden leave of absence as the scandal was deepening. So far, the huge document dumps by the Bush Administration (designed to waste time and slow down investigations) as their response to the political purge scandal has backfired. Too many curious e-mails are showing up, including e-mail accounts from White House officials using RNC e-mail accounts apparently to avoid accountability. This truly is a big deal. Steve Soto of The Left Coaster offers some perspective on the growing scandal (emphasis mine):

The White House’s use of nongovernmental email accounts and servers to mask their political activities done on government time is about to blow up in their faces. It has been noticed by the media and congressional investigators that Karl Rove’s political operation inside the White House has this habit of using RNC and Bush/Cheney campaign email accounts and servers for ostensibly official business conducted inside the White House. In several email releases over the last week tied to the fired federal prosecutors cover-up, it has been noticed that White House officials were using nongovernmental accounts and servers to communicate with the Justice Department.

Henry Waxman has caught up to them, and is now telling both the RNC and Bush/Cheney 2004 to save their emails from purging, as they are now the subject of his inquiry. Sure, the RNC and Bush/Cheney will now furiously delete all these emails if they haven’t done so already, but just the fact that there is a record of such communication means that: 1) it is essential to demand that Rove and others be put under oath to testify to Congress; and 2) claims of executive privilege go out the window if the White House was conducting the allegedly protected communications in a nonsecure, purely political manner through outside cut outs.

As CREW noted today and previously, the White House would use such means to avoid the provisions of the Presidential Records Act, which requires the administration to maintain a publicly accessible record of their actions.

Using e-mail accounts from political operations like the Republican National Committee simply destroys the executive privilege defense. This is a bipartisan issue. If Republicans in Congress still believe in the rule of law, they have to join the Democrats or the government is simply nothing more than the Mayberry Mafia.

Josh Marshall, whose TPM team did the investigation that broke the story open, has this to say today about the curious RNC e-mail accounts:

According to the National Journal, about 95% of Karl Rove's email traffic has been on these RNC email accounts.

Now, I don't know all the legal and constitutional ins and outs of this debate. But whatever claim the White House may have to protect everyone at the White House from congressional scrutiny by invoking executive privilege, this use of outside private email accounts may turn out to be too clever by half.

Can executive privilege even conceiveably cover emails from the Republican National Committee? ...

We already know that Harriet Miers was involved in the scandal. We already know that Karl Rove discussed firing the attorneys. We know the liaison between the White House and the Justice Department is taking the fifth. The story is now just as much in the White House as it is in the Justice Department. The American people deserve straight answers, under oath, and in the light of day.

Gonzales Appears to Be Doing Bush's Bidding

I'm short on time for blogging these days and hope soon to get on a more blog-friendly schedule but, for now, here's as relevant a story as one can see on the firing of the US attorneys; Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo has been in the thick of things:

For some, it is a matter of outrage that President Bush has renewed his support for Alberto Gonzales even after new evidence has emerged that the Attorney General has repeatedly lied about the US Attorney Purge. Myself, I see it more as a matter of confirmation and almost a welcome one in that it confirms the nature of the debate we're having.

This isn't a case where Alberto Gonzales has fallen short of the president's standards or bungled some process. This is the standard. The Attorney General has done and is doing precisely what is expected of him.

Consider this.

When Alberto Gonzales went up to the Hill earlier this year and answered questions about the US Attorney firings, he lied about why they'd been fired. When evidence revealed that what he had told the Senate was not true, he told the country in his televised press conference that he hadn't been directly involved in the process and thus had not knowingly misled the Senate. Friday's document dump showed that that too was a lie. These of course are only the most conspicuous examples and I leave aside the numerous instances of his aides lying on his behalf.

A growing number of Republicans are beginning to recognize that we have a serious problem in the White House. If our government is to have integrity, if our system of justice is to have credibility, if our constitution is to function properly, something has to give.

Latest White House Scandal Growing

First things first. Get over to Talking Points Memo or TPMMuckraker to get the latest on what's happening with the US Attorney scandal; these guys broke the story and are the point men for the story. The major newspapers and networks are finally on to it and adding some juicy bits to the unfolding scandal.

One word is sufficient to describe this latest scandal: arrogance. The leading figures of the Bush Administration have convinced themselves that they're above the law; and they thought if they were clever enough they could get away with playing political dynamite with our system of US Attorneys. And now they're squirming and dodging and avoiding testimony before Congress; Think Progress notes the following story:

MSNBC’s Mike Viquiera: “Fred Fielding, he’s the White House counsel, he was just here meeting with the House Judiciary Committee. He made the following offer to the Congress, both House and Senate. He said Rove and Harriet Miers would be offered to the committees for their testimony in the Alberto Gonzales prosecutors scandal. However, it would be unsworn testimony, not under oath, behind closed doors, and no transcript would be permitted. Now, that is not what Congress is looking for.”

This offer is similar to the deal that was made to Bush and Cheney by the rubber stamp Congress when the Republicans were in control. During the investigation of the White House leak of CIA covert operative Valerie Plame's identity to the press, Bush and Cheney were allowed to testify behind closed doors in an informal setting about their role in the affair; to this day the American people have no idea what the president and vice president said. Since their testimony, significant evidence has come to light that Dick Cheney played a key role in the smearing of Joe Wilson. In addition, Bush supposedly gave Cheney the authority to declassify some crucial information, but that too had the smell of political convenience. There is also evidence to suggest that President Bush considered it important to protect Karl Rove from the fallout over the CIA leak. Karl Rove has no official role in national security. He is strictly a political adviser. Protecting a political adviser makes it very clear that the CIA leak was about politics at its worst; it was also about abusing national security procedure for the sake of politics.

In the last six years, Republican leaders in Congress may have felt comfortable giving Bush a free pass despite abundant evidence of his incompetence and recklessness and despite a growing number of serious ethical breaches within his administration and outright abuses of power, but the American people are increasingly restless; there have been a number of disturbing revelations and Americans want answers. It looks like, with the Democrats in control, that Congress is finally ready to demand some accountability.

US Attorneys are indeed political appointments but they have a special role in safeguarding the integrity of our government. They must be above the taint of politics. When there are those in an administration who try to rig what US Attorneys can prosecute or not, our government and our democracy is damaged. We have a problem, and once again, it is not clear that President Bush understands that he has an obligation to fix it. What we do not need is another public relations massage from the White House. We need to restore the integrity of our government. And that may be difficult given the number of lies that have been coming out of the White House.

The White House Hazy Memory Defense Being Used Again

It's becoming obvious that facts, those pesky things that the rich and powerful dislike, are not well received at the White House these days. Suddenly, a virus is loose in the White House: the cconvenient hazy memory virus that appears every time White House officials get in trouble.

In the wake of the firing of US Attorneys for political purposes, The Huffington Post has the latest on the White House Hazy Memory Syndrome:

The White House dropped its contention Friday that former Counsel Harriet Miers first raised the idea of firing U.S. attorneys, blaming "hazy memories" as e-mails shed new light on Karl Rove's role. Support eroded further for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Presidential press secretary Tony Snow previously had asserted Miers was the person who came up with the idea, but he said Friday, "I don't want to try to vouch for origination." He said, "At this juncture, people have hazy memories."

Scooter Libby has hazy memory. Karl Rove has hazy memory. Alberto Gonzales has hazy memory. Tony Snow appears to be the press person for a whole White House of hazy memory. It's amazing any of these guys can find their way to the front door of the White House each morning.