Cheney and Other Republican Liars and Hypocrites

Since 2002, no government official lied about the war in Iraq more than Dick Cheney. In a different era, the vice president would have been impeached and sent packing. Cheney's outing of a CIA officer whose husband's factual report on Niger yellowcake disagreed with Cheney's self-serving fantasies should have been enough to send the vice president to jail. Dick Cheney's authoritarian and anti-social character has been on display repeatedly but in no case was it more obvious than when he shot a friend of his in the face with a shotgun and it was the friend who was obliged to apologize. Strange man, Dick Cheney.

I am proud to be yet another blog linking to Larry Wilkerson's article in The Washington Note:

...when Cheney claims that if President Obama stops "the Cheney method of interrogation and torture", the nation will be in danger, he is perverting the facts once again. But in a very ironic way.

My investigations have revealed to me--vividly and clearly--that once the Abu Ghraib photographs were made public in the Spring of 2004, the CIA, its contractors, and everyone else involved in administering "the Cheney methods of interrogation", simply shut down. Nada. Nothing. No torture or harsh techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator. Period. People were too frightened by what might happen to them if they continued.

What I am saying is that no torture or harsh interrogation techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator for the entire second term of Cheney-Bush, 2005-2009.

(snip)

Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002--well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion--its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.

(snip)

There in fact were no such contacts.

It's a national disgrace that right-wing Republicans continue to coddle such liars as Dick Cheney. But Cheney wasn't the only liar. We have to include such 'stalwart' Republicans as Donald Rumseld, Scooter Libby, Alberto Gonzalez, Douglas Feith, and yes, George W. Bush. There were plenty of others. The fact remains that the Bush Administration felt comfortable lying to Congress for eight years. But they didn't stop there. They lied to the American people.

Now Nancy Pelosi is accused of lying about what she was told by an administration that had little credibility. Our country needs a reliable non-political CIA but Bush and Cheney were doing everything they could to politicize parts of the government that had always been nonpolitical and bipartisan. As an example, the Bush Administration promoted people like Dusty Foggo to the number three spot at the CIA:

Foggo is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria after pleading guilty to a single count of fraud as part of a plea bargain. He is the highest ranking CIA officer ever to be convicted of a federal felony.

The fraud was part of a bribery ring that included Foggo's old friend, contractor Brent Wilkes, and former [Republican] Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, both of whom have been sentenced to years in prison.

Court papers filed this week offer the most detailed glimpse yet of Foggo's misconduct, which included getting his mistress hired to a $100,000 a year job at the CIA and steering millions of dollars in CIA contracts to Wilkes.

Even in the CIA there were people under Bush who were feeding at the public trough.

Again, most people in the intelligence community are competent professionals. But Bush and Cheney were not shy about bending the rules and finding people who would do the same. Here's another example of life under Bush by way of Talking Points Memo:

Adm. Mike McConnell came in as the Director of National Intelligence with a rep for being professional and non-partisan, a calling card the Bush Administration has put to its own uses.

(snip)

In his first months as DNI, McConnell did plenty to undermine that rep. He told Congress that three German terrorism suspects had been arrested due to intercepts made possible by the then-new Protect America Act when in fact they were obtained under the old FISA law. Soon after, McConnell offered a especially misleading account to Congress of a supposed FISA Court ruling that had delayed the U.S. from spying on the kidnappers of U.S. troops in Iraq. And throughout congressional debate on a surveillance law he claimed that the debate itself endangered American lives.

Then earlier this year, he suggested that a questioner at a public event at Johns Hopkins was "disappointed" that the U.S. hadn't suffered additional terrorist attacks. And now McConnell has really let lose, framing the Senate debate on the surveillance bill as being between those who think "we shouldn't have an Intelligence Community" and those who do. That has prompted a letter from Sen. Russ Feingold demanding an apology for those false characterizations of the debate.

There were other people besides McConnell who served at Bush's pleasure and thought nothing of lying to Congress. We know Cheney and others were liars. We know they lied to people like Pelosi. Until proven otherwise, I think we already know who the liars are. In the current political climate, Dick Cheney will never be prosecuted and sent to jail for his crimes. At the very least, he should go home and the news media should stop paying attention to a man who lied his way into a war our nation did not need.

Utah Coal Mine Troubles

The strange saga of Robert Murray and the coal mining disaster in Utah continues. It got my undivided attention when I heard the claims that the disaster was caused by an earthquake. The seismic activity in most of the Rocky Mountains is relatively quiet but a manmade disaster can be big enough to show up on seismographs. Somebody seemed to be pushing the argument for what happened backwards. Nine people died and the families deserve the facts, and not the usual spin that seems prevalent in the current Bush era.

The Salt Lake Tribune has been covering the disaster closely and here's an article by Robert Gehrke that raises a number of questions:

Robert Murray insists that his company did not change the mining plan at Crandall Canyon after purchasing a joint interest in the mine last August.

But documents obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune clearly contradict Murray's assertion, and show that Murray's company sought and received approval from federal regulators to make a significant, and, experts say, risky change to the mining strategy.

Records of the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) show that, after Murray acquired a 50 percent ownership in the mine on Aug. 9, 2006, his company repeatedly petitioned the agency to allow coal to be extracted from the north and south barriers - thick walls of coal that run on both sides of the main tunnels and help hold up the mine.

That stands in stark contrast to statements Murray made Monday asserting that his company's mine plan, and that of the previous owner, were one and the same.

(snip)

Documents on file with the Utah Division of Oil Gas and Mining show Andalex [the previous owner] had previously decided not to mine those barriers, determining it posed a risk to worker safety.

The article doesn't let the Bush Administration off the hook either. The MSHA took only seven business days to approve Murray's plan; given the serious safety issues involved and previous concerns, that seems rather quick. I'm also puzzled by the term, 'bump.' I don't know if that's a term used by miners or a euphemism used by owners. If my car tire suddenly goes flat, that's not a bump, it's a blowout.

In an era of high energy prices and high demands, we are going to see people push safety issues to the limit. We are going to see it in our country and we're going to see it elsewhere. I know enough about industry to know how safety can easily be chipped away so that people are put in increasing danger until somebody blows a whistle or disaster strikes. Business owners may not like regulation but there's usually a sad history behind the regulations and when it comes to safety, there are no excuses.

The Nonexistent Credibility of Bush & Co.

During Congressional hearings held on the mafia some forty to fifty years ago the most common response by mafia types being questioned was invoking the fifth. Thanks to the 'leadership' emanating from the White House, a line of questioning might lead to a more nonsensical line of defense these days:

Congressman: Did you kill One-armed Sonny on July 31 on order from Mafia boss Corleone?

Hitman (after hesitating, consulting his lawyers, and pausing): I don't recall.

Congressman: Let's take this step by step. You were seen by two witnesses. You still had your gun when you left the building. The five bullets that hit One-armed Sonny came from your gun. You had blood on your jacket. You have agreed to testify in exchange for leniency. So I ask again, just the first part of the question: did you kill One-armed Sonny?

Hitman (same drama as before): I have no memory of causing his death.


Welcome to the era of the hazy memory defense.

Scooter Libby has hazy memory.

Karl Rove has hazy memory.

Alberto Gonzales has hazy memory.

Donald Rumsfeld has hazy memory.

Gonzales and Rumsfeld are also somewhat adept at playing rope-a-dope, which is simply filling their alloted time with nonsense and bullshit as they evades proper and legal questions from Congress. They won't even give a straight answer to the press.

Cheney is now attempting the hazy memory defense.

Dan Froomkin of White House Watch (in a column called "Cheney's Unmistakable Admission") has this post on our ethically-challenged Vice President:

In an interview yesterday, CNN's Larry King asked Vice President Cheney if he dispatched Alberto Gonzales and Andy Card to a Washington hospital room to pressure a sedated John Ashcroft, then attorney general, to approve surveillance techniques that Ashcroft's subordinates had concluded were illegal.

Cheney's response?

"THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't recall -- . . . I don't recall that I gave instructions to that effect.

"Q That would be something you would recall.

"THE VICE PRESIDENT: I would think so. But certainly I was involved because I was a big advocate of the Terrorist Surveillance Program, and had been responsible and working . . . to get it to the President for approval. By the time this occurred, it had already been approved about 12 times by the Department of Justice. There was nothing new about it.

"Q So you didn't send them to get permission.

"THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't recall that I was the one who sent them to the hospital."

Have you ever heard such a non-denial denial? Seriously: Can anyone reading this see it as anything but an admission that Gonzales and Card (then White House counsel and chief of staff, respectively) were following Cheney's orders?

He doesn't remember sending them to the hospital. Well, what does he remember?

Froomkin has a good summary of the events and issues involved. His post is a reminder that bloggers need to summarize events more often as more facts are uncovered and as more bamboozlement and distractions comes from the Bush Administration and their enablers in the media. The noise machine that seems to be about 90% of the function of the White House these days spends a great deal of time denying events while deliberately compounding and confusing the issues at the same time. Make no mistake. At this late date, we have no reason to trust Bush and Cheney's claims. Congress needs to take a hard look at everything these two are doing and have done. The fact that our Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, is still hanging on to his job tells us that we have a serious problem and that the problem is higher up.



Update: See Dan Froomkin's latest column on Thursday ("Karl Rove's Immunity")

I Support the Troops and Oppose Bush's Fiasco

I support our troops and oppose Bush's reckless and arrogant war in Iraq. I'm tired of the way Bush's many and various reasons for war fall apart. And I'm tired of the latest mindless drivel from right wing Republicans that if we don't fight them there, they'll come here. That's an old line from emotional and baseless arguments that were used by the John Birchers of the Cold War era. During the Cold War, the John Birchers were considered the lunatic fringe by both Republicans and Democrats. Today's Republicans ought to know better.

Despite the hysterical shrillness of the American right, it is no contradiction to say I support the troops and oppose Bush's war in Iraq, and I'm tired of the deliberate distortion of such a simple and straightforward view. The right wingers even fail to note that an overwhelming majority of Americans, myself included, agreed with the necessity of dealing militarily with Afghanistan. But when did we begin accepting the nonsense of starting a second war, a war we obviously did not need, before finishing a war that needed to be finished in the first place? The bottom line is that George W. Bush must be held accountable by the legal means provided by the US Constitution. It is time.

Let me offer an analogy. Keeping in mind that no analogy is perfect, that their purpose is to illustrate a point rather than playing broad word games (Ah! You're really talking about 9/11! (actually no)), consider a crooked mayor of a major city. The mayor has financial reasons for wanting to replace the current city hall but he can't say that to the voters. He tries this and he tries that and the voters don't buy it and he has to be careful that he doesn't get in trouble with the voters, so he backs off. But he still wants a new city hall—with a his name on it—and plenty of contracts for his cronies.

Like I said, this mayor is not particularly honest and he comes up with the bright idea of moving his office to the Hilton because 'city hall is no longer safe: it is old and decrepit and a fire hazard.' Or so the mayor says. The critics take issue with the mayor; it's a perfectly fine building and maybe the critics concede an improvement or two may be necessary (aha! say the mayor friends, see, see!) but certainly not the complete replacement of city hall. The critics, despite the noise of the mayor's supporters, start making headway and the mayor gets nervous and comes up with another bright idea: he calls in his inner circle and he tells his henchmen to burn down the city hall during a parade when no one's looking too closely: the city will have no choice but to replace the city hall!

Now for all practical purposes, the mayor doesn't actually light the fire but he's the one who owns the box of matches. Anyway, the city hall's on fire and he's satisfied that his plan is moving along. He'll have the voters in his hands in no time. But his henchmen didn't know what they were doing. They made such a mess of burning down city hall, that nearby blocks are now on fire. It's a lot bigger fire than the mayor intended. The firemen, who have nothing to do with the mayor's crooked decision to burn down city hall, are doing their job. But it's such a huge fire that firemen are getting injured. Some are getting killed. And people are finding out that the mayor has been diverting funds for fire equipment and training. But the mayor's behind the firemen and when people start suspecting what a crook the mayor is, he tries to say that his critics don't support the firemen.... Bull.

It's a no brainer that people would support the firemen in such a situation. They're just doing their job and they're putting their lives on the line. But somebody started that fire and if you have your eyes open, it's not that hard to notice that the civilian guy in charge is responsible for the fire, and is a crook.

Bush is a crook. He started a fire in Iraq. The fire is a lot bigger than he ever thought it was going to be. He screwed up royally. Our troops are trying to put out the fire that Bush started and the incompetence and ideological rigidity and the budget cuts of the Bush Administration aren't helping our troops. A crook needs to be held accountable. Some argue that Bush is merely incompetent, and not a crook. But these days, not many Americans buy the argument that we can trust Bush, and they're just now beginning to realize that Bush is a lawbreaker and dishonest—I call him a crook, for short. That assessment has nothing to do with our troops. They're doing their job and putting their lives on the line. For all practical purposes, they've done their job and yet they're still on the line. Prolonging the war doesn't make sense. It's time for the Iraqis to put out their own fire. Yeah, we made a mess and we'll have to help them somewhat and no doubt we'll have no choice but to leave some troops nearby and even our air force and navy will have to keep flying overhead, but the Iraqis themselves have been adding fuel to the fire and now have some responsibility for the fire in Iraq. Keep in mind there are no good solutions to Iraq. That is an indication of how badly Bush and his neocons advisers have mucked things.

Congress doesn't have a lot of tools for making a president accountable for his mistakes, his lies, and his dishonesty once a war we did not need is launched. One of those tools happens to be funding. If you want to stop the killing of our soldiers, you have to stop doing the same thing over and over without purpose. And about the only way to do that is to get the president's attention by cutting off funding. There are plenty of ways to protect our troops as we draw down but funding a war whose purpose has been reduced to putting our troops on patrol so they can get shot at is not exactly good for our troops. Sending our troops on tour after tour is not good for our troops. Failing to train our troops is not good for our troops. It doesn't make sense.

Right wingers who say Democrats don't support the troops don't know what they're talking about. And Bush's continuing refusal to listen to the Iraq Study Group in a timely manner, say six months ago instead of six months from now, is inexcusable. Kicking the can down the road is not an acceptable policy. It would make more sense for Cheney and Bush to resign than allow Bush's war to drift for another 20 months in the hands of these two incompetent crooks who have botched things so badly we're now in the middle of a civil war.

And then there's the issue of that box of matches that Bush and Cheney are still holding. They've still got them. They're still capable of starting another war we don't need. Does any conservative at this late date believe another war will be 'supporting our troops'? Or are they just playing politics? Or both? I'm tired of the charade that Republicans know what they're talking about. We've had six years of Republican domination to find out that their philosophy, for what it is, isn't worth a pile a beans.

I repeat: I support the troops and I oppose Bush's fiasco in Iraq. We don't need more excuses and photo ops from Bush, we need accountability. If we are still a democracy, legal procedures must prevail. It's time for responsible Republicans to join Democrats instead of defending Bush. Congress can cut funding for Bush's war. Congress can continue investigations. Congress can appoint special prosecutors. And if these fail to hold Bush and Cheney accountable, there is always impeachment. But it's time to take care of business so our nation can move forward.

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.

Bush Administration Literally Commits Millions of Crimes

For many decades, someone in the White House has had the responsibility to make sure records are preserved. Given the games that Richard Nixon played, a law was passed that required that presidents and their advisers keep track of their phone calls and correspondence. They are doing the public's business. There are times when a president conveniently claims executive privilege and that may fly or not, but on political matters there can be no executive privilege and there can be no such privilege when a White House official such as Karl Rove extensively uses e-mail accounts from the White House through the National Republican Committee (RNC). There are red flags all over the place on the issue. We know, for example, that convicted felon Jack Abramoff was using RNC accounts to discuss things with Rove's assistants at the White House.

The idea that Rove 'accidentally' lost his e-mails is just another cookie caper: "But I thought those were just old cookies in the cookie jar so I stored them by the trash can; I never imagined anyone would throw them out. I know what you're thinking! Honest, I didn't eat them! Anyway, the trash has already been taken so I can't possibly be guilty." Sure. Right. It's special prosecutor time.

Paul Kiel of TPM Muckraker has a transcript of a White House press briefing; here's the part I'd like to discuss a moment:

Dana Perino gave an explanation of sorts:

(snip)

I don't have a specific number for you. Again, I wouldn't rule out that there were a potential 5 million emails lost, but we'll see if we can get to you. If it was 5 million, I think that, again, out of 1,700 people using email every day, again, there was no intent to have lost them.

(snip)

Now, one of the things that occurred -- and we're also trying to figure out how many emails possibly could be sent by 1,700 employees on a daily basis. I don't know if the numbers are staggering. My inbox is staggering so -- we'll work to find that out. But there was a conversion sometime between 2002 and 2003 to convert people that were using Lotus Notes when we first arrived to Microsoft Outlook. And I know that the tech people worked to get us all transferred over. We had to save our Word documents and all to make sure that they weren't lost in that transition.

I don't have a specific number for you. Again, I wouldn't rule out that there were a potential 5 million emails lost, but we'll see if we can get to you. If it was 5 million, I think that, again, out of 1,700 people using email every day, again, there was no intent to have lost them.

Five million e-mails by 1700 employees is not all that much. Assume six years in office and 250 work days for each year; over six years, that's 1500 workdays. If each employee only writes 2 e-mails a day, that over five million. We actually could be talking about a much higher number.

But here's something to consider: there appears to have been no effort made to make sure the e-mails were preserved. Perino's story ignores the obvious problem: no one apparently bothered to make sure the White House and other officials were complying with the law. That in itself raises legal issues. Whoever is in charge of records keeping is in trouble. Whoever the White House counsel is who handles such matters (such as making sure staffers comply with the laws that apply to the White House) is in trouble (hey, does that include Alberto Gonzales again?).

The fact that RNC accounts outside the White House system existed can only be explained as an attempt to deceive Congress, various watchdog agencies and the American people. Across the board, including laws involving other matters, the number of laws that Bush and his advisers are breaking and the number of times they have been doing it is staggering. We must face the fact that criminality in the executive branch, particularly when political appointees such as Karl Rove are involved, is now extensive. Congress must act and the media needs to recognize we have a problem.

Karl Rove May Need Very Own Special Prosecutor

In scandal after scandal, Karl Rove's name keeps popping up. After repeated trips to the grand jury to explain himself, and a certain amount of jawboning, he managed to wriggle out of legal prosecution during the Leakgate investigation and we may now know why. Larry Johnson of No Quarter has some relevant details:

News that White House staffers, which includes Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, used RNC email accounts in order to avoid the scrutiny that normally comes with the White House email account raises an interesting question--Did Patrick Fitzgerald know this? It appears the answer is no.

If that is the case then we are looking at the potential for new obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame case. Why? For starters there are the subpoenas the White House received in 2003. They were required to turn over all emails relating to the Valerie Plame case, not just White House emails. Just when you thought the Plame case was at a dead end it looks like the hubris of the Republicans have given it new life. ...

Josh Marshall has more details on what is clearly a growing scandal involving Karl Rove and other White House staffers violating the law to avoid accountability:

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) just sent a letter to Alberto Gonzales.... Waxman spoke to RNC Counsel Rob Kelner. According to Kelner, even after the RNC began saving Karl Rove's emails, in response to orders from Pat Fitzgerald, Rove himself apparently continued to delete the messages himself well into 2005.

White House officials are required by law to keep records of their calls and letters. These officials work for the American people and their records are public property; keeping records is a way to make sure there is transparency in our government. We need a much closer look at the shennigans of master political operator Karl Rove. A special prosecutor is in order.

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.

Justice, Texas Style...Er, Rove Style

The United States is not perfect but one of the things that tends to make us different from other countries is that the powerful do not automatically get a free pass. Lately, of course, it seems powerful Republicans have been getting so many free passes that they take for granted that they can do anything. There's Tom Delay, for example, whose arrogance got so out of control that he started saying things to people like, "I am the government." People that arrogant tend to be genuinely astonished when they're caught.

The powerful in Texas have always had a reputation of getting away with more nonsense than the powerful elsewhere in the United States. Karl Rove was in his element when he was helping Governor George W. Bush in Texas. However, Rove perfected his gamemanship in Texas and has applied his lessons in six years at the White House. Rove has learned his craft so well it's not certain he will ever be brought to justice. The fact that he emerged from Leakgate without being indicted has astonished everyone who cares about the rule of law. That's not a slam against Fitzgerald, that's just acknowledgement that Rove is very slick.

In a number of scandals in Washington, Karl Rove has a knack of showing up one way or the other behind the scenes of the major players in each scandal. Just to name a few, Rove is linked to Leakgate (he was directly involved in the leaking), he's linked to Purgegate (he appears to have recommended that US attorneys be fired and one of his closest associates was called to replace a US attorney in Arkansas), he's linked to the lies that were told to sell the war in Iraq (he was a member of the White House Iraq Group whose job was to sell the war), he's linked to the swiftboating of John Kerry (some of the people involved had longtime associations with Rove) and he's linked to Jack Abramoff (actually a lot of Republicans are linked to Abramoff but Rove is linked in several ways, as is his former assistant Susan Ralston).

I was busy last Friday and missed a post by Steve Soto of The Left Coaster (hat tip to Firedoglake for keeping the information alive):

While the Democrats are focused elsewhere, the Bush Administration is trying today to close off any future damage from the Jack Abramoff mess by tanking the government's case against former industry lobbyist and Interior Department deputy J. Steven Griles. In a court filing this morning, the Alberto Gonzales Justice Department will now allow Griles to plead simply to one count of obstruction of justice by lying to Congress. But Justice will also ask the court for only the minimum sentence for Griles, and will not demand that Griles cooperate with the government’s pursuit of others, including possibly Abramoff, Interior Secretary Gale Norton, GOP representative John Doolittle ☼, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, and Grover Norquist. In essence, the Bush Justice Department is covering its tracks and eliminating any trail to the White House by scuttling this case and allowing Griles to walk away from cooperating with them on other investigations.

In fact, the Bush Administration is trying to bury the Abramoff case itself.

It was just this past January that Justice notified Griles that he was a target in the Abramoff case, and now the Bush Administration has moved to remove Griles as a possible problem for them in that case.

(snip)

What is also true is that DOJ has run the Abramoff case not from a regional office under a United States Attorney, but rather from headquarters using a revolving door of prosecutors and section chiefs, allowing one constant person to maintain control of the case through this turnover: Criminal Division head Alice Fisher, who has already been accused by Democrats of being an under experienced partisan hack (hat tip to Jane Hamsher). Fisher is now in a position through this turmoil and turnover beneath her to sink the Abramoff case and shut off the Griles problem for the White House while the Democrats are focused on the misdeeds at the district office level.

If the Democrats knew what they were doing today, they would note this action by Justice and immediately demand the appointment of a special counsel due to the obvious conflict of interest here. Of course Alberto would reject such a request, but 1) Democrats want Gonzales to do exactly that as a further nail in his coffin; and 2) Democrats need to signal to the federal judge that she shouldn't accept the government's self-serving plea offer here.

I suppose Karl Rove isn't in everything that is crooked in the Bush Administration but I suspect he's the one at risk if the Abramoff investigation goes too far. R. Jeffrey Smith of The Washington Post notes some curious instances of the White House avoiding using official channels to do business from the White House, political business; in other words, games they don't want the public to know about (hat tip again to Jame Hamsher of Firedoglake):

A Democratic House committee chairman yesterday told the Republican National Committee and the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign to retain copies of all e-mails sent or received by White House officials using e-mail accounts under their control, raising the political stakes in the congressional inquiry into U.S. attorneys' firings.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) said his broadly written request was based on evidence that White House officials -- particularly aides to top political adviser Karl Rove -- have used their politically related e-mail accounts to hide the conduct of official business regarding the prosecutor firings and other matters being investigated by Congress.

(snip)

Waxman noted for example that J. Scott Jennings, the White House deputy director of political affairs, used a "gwb43.com" e-mail account last August to discuss the replacement of the U.S. attorney for Arkansas, Bud Cummins, according to e-mails released to Congress by the White House.

Barry Jackson, a deputy to Rove, in 2003 used a "georgewbush.com" e-mail account to consult with Neil G. Volz, then an aide to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, about nominating one of Abramoff's Indian tribe clients for a Medal of Freedom, according to a copy of an e-mail. Abramoff is now serving a prison sentence for bank fraud, and Volz plead guilty to conspiracy charges last year.

Susan B. Ralston, while she was executive assistant to Rove, similarly used "georgewbush.com" and "rnchq.org" e-mail accounts to confer in 2001 and 2003 with Abramoff, her former boss, about matters of interest to Abramoff's clients.

In a related e-mail, an Abramoff aide said Ralston had warned that "it is better to not put this stuff in writing in [the White House] . . . email system because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc."

There's a stink coming from the White House that we can smell all the way out here in California. And there appears to be major damage control inside the White House and Justice Department of the kind that Congress needs to look at closely. Rove is involved. No one should have any doubt of that. I think we we're finally beginning to get some clues on how the no-bid contract system may have worked. That means Dick Cheney. There are signs that Cheney is also linked to the Cunningham scandal (take a peek over at Talking Points Memo). What a pair: Rove and Cheney. And an indulgent president.

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.

Bush's Arrogance Continues

There is no humility in George W. Bush. He can feign humility for the cameras but the politics of closed door, behind-the-scenes arrogance is his natural milieu. It makes perfect sense that he wants some of his top aides to testify to Congress behind closed doors, without transcripts and without taking an oath to tell the truth. Bush's comments about fishing expeditions against 'honorable public servants' rings rather hollow if one of the people he is referring to is Karl Rove.

The media shouldn't forget that part of the issue here was a backdoor attempt by the White House to avoid scrutiny by changing the way US Attorneys are appointed. Bush wanted to bypass the Senate so he could fire people who were not political enough for his taste while at the same time making it possible to get administration cronies into US Attorney without being vetted by Congress, a co-equal branch of government if the president would care to remember. Today, the Senate changed that rule back to its original form by a vote of 94-2.

Dan Froomkin of White House Watch had a post this morning well before Bush's defensive press conference and explains why the president is, after all, so defensive:

Last night's 3,000-page Justice Department document dump, still dribbling out into the public domain, appears to be a much more carefully screened release than the smaller but newsier one last week.

In barely acknowledging the White House role in the highly controversial, possibly politically-motivated firing of eight U.S. attorneys, these new documents may best be described as a lot of chaff, intended to deflect attention from evidence in the previous dump that the purge originated at the White House, was executed by the White House, and was extensively discussed with White House aides.

Froomkin is probably right that Monday night's document dump was much more screened than the first one. And yet, more issues keep getting raised. Kevin Drum of The Washington Monthly points out two problems:

...DOJ hasn't released any documents from prior to the purge showing how they judged the performance of the folks they were firing. All we have is a summary document from after the purge, where DOJ apparatchiks are tripping over themselves trying to figure out just what those reasons were. But of course, that doesn't make sense. If they had really had firm, irreproachable reasons for firing the "USA-8," they would have just dug up the old memos that spelled out those reasons and transferred them to the summary sheet. Or maybe just released the original memos themselves. Instead they were running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

(snip)

...the five firings with the weakest official explanations are the same five prosecutors who have been suspected of being either too tough on Republican corruption cases or too weak on Democratic ones. You can't very well put that on your summary sheet, though, which probably explains why the DOJies had trouble coming up with good reasons for firing them. The dots are practically begging to be connected here.

So where are the original memos explaining beforehand why the eight were fired, including the five with the weakest case for firing? I'm sure we can expect some classic stonewalling by an administration that didn't count on being caught redhanded.

Finally, Truthout has an article by Robert L. Borosage that bluntly lays out the case against the Bush Administration and their conservatives friends:

...conservatives are acutely aware that they represent a minority, not a majority, position in America. From Nixon to Lee Atwater to Karl Rove, they play politics and exploit America's divides with back-alley brass knuckles-from Reagan's welfare queen to Bush's impugning the patriotism of Georgia Senator Max Cleland, a Vietnam War hero who literally sacrificed his limbs in the service of his country. They excel in the politics of personal destruction, as Democratic presidential candidates Michael Dukakis and John Kerry discovered. And in the grand tradition of the establishment in American politics, they are relentless in seeking to suppress the vote, particularly of the poor and minorities who would vote against them in large numbers.

Gonzales' imbroglio is a direct expression of this. At its core is the run-up to the 2006 elections with the Republicans under siege for the most corrupt Congress ever. The White House and Republican politicians grew exercised at Republican prosecutors who they considered too lax in exposing potential Democratic corruption, too avid in pursuing Republican crimes or too slow in prosecuting reports of "voter fraud," the GOP code for using investigations to disrupt minority registration and get out the vote programs, and to intimidate wary black and Latino voters. Justice was ranking U.S. attorneys based on whether they were "loyal Bushies."

The axing of David C. Iglesias, the U.S. attorney in New Mexico, is the archetype. With New Mexico up for grabs, Iglesias was being pressured directly and shamelessly by Republican Sen. Pete Domenici and Mickey Barnett, the attorney representing the Bush campaign in New Mexico to hustle up indictments on alleged incidents of voter fraud. (Iglesias found no evidence of any program designed to influence an election.) Vulnerable Rep. Heather Wilson lobbied him to bring indictments against state Democratic officials before the election to help make the point that when it comes to corruption, everyone does it. When Iglesias refused to respond, he was targeted despite glowing performance reviews. The firings took place as an object lesson for U.S .attorneys headed into the donnybrook that will be the 2008 election. As Iglesias put it , "main Justice was up to its eyeballs in partisan political maneuvers."

Everyone does it. That was Nixon's excuse but, as John Dean has pointed out, the current abuses emanating from the White House are worse than Watergate. Perhaps Borosage puts things more bluntly than some people would prefer. Nevertheless, we have never seen anything quite like the Bush Administration.

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.

Henry Waxman and the Valerie Plame Hearing

Someday, the Republican Party will rebuild itself and they'll start electing officials to Washington again who are interested in governing and enforcing the law in a reasonable manner. One of the bizarre qualities of the Republican Party these days are the numbers in Congress and the White House who are more interested in a right wing game of winning 'technical' points in some sort one-upmanship with rational conservatives, moderates and liberals while ripping off the American people for pure personal gain and some distorted sense of prestige. I've never seen so much outright lying, corruption and delusional thinking. Those are words many of us were reluctant to use five years ago but how else to describe what we're seeing with our own eyes?

Bush, Cheney, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby outed a CIA covert operative for a petty game of payback because they didn't like having their lies about a supposed Niger/Iraq connection exposed. That's the bottom line. Well, actually, the bottom line is worse. Even if we manage to stabilize Iraq before we leave, the war was a waste of money, time, lives and national credibility. We now know that you never put right wingers in charge of a government. Even conservatives, moderates and liberals require oversight, checks and balances and accountability if we're to get anything good out of our government. I prefer liberals and moderates since they often have been the source of real reform in our country and we're clearly in need of reform at the moment.

If we're to have reform, we're going to need more people like Rep. Henry Waxman who has always been an effective watchdog in Congress. Emptywheel of Firedoglake has a casual though excellent summary of the Waxman hearings on Valerie Plame and the irresponsible disclosure of classified information by the White House:

I was skeptical, at first, about a Friday hearing. Democrats have ended the Republican practice of 2.5 day work weeks. But Congressmen do need to be home in their districts on weekends for constituent services. Which means if you’re going to hold a 4 hour hearing on a Friday, you’re really asking your members to jump through hoops to attend the meeting. And Waxman got that commitment from enough of his members to make it an effective hearing. Whereas Davis couldn’t persuade enough Republicans to attend even to give him a chance to launch his bid at closing the hearing.

The result reminded me of the rump hearing the Democrats had on the intelligence leading to the Iraq War—for most of the hearing, Tom Davis was the only Republican present. With cameos, of course, from Congressman Westmoreland so he could leer at Valerie. In truth, the Republicans were most consistently represented by a never-named attorney, a tall guy who sat right next to Davis in Congressman Dan Burton's seat. The lawyer had a look of “oh shit” on his face for the better part of the hearing and he kept swallowing his lips when he thought. For much of the hearing, Davis and GOP Counsel were sitting there, huddled with two aides, which really added to the look of desperation. And by the end, for most of Victoria Toensing’s appearance, the only one (aside from a few aides) sitting on the Republican side was GOP Counsel. That’s what they’ve come to—sending their lawyer in their stead, to protect them from the oversight they’re supposed to be exercising.

(snip)

The truly great part of the hearing was the pairing of Bill Leonard and James Knodell. Because Waxman and Hodes and the rest of the committee grilled Knodell, but they did so using the standards Leonard established. Leonard's one of those stiff law and order types, so it framed Knodell as breaking Leonard's laws, not Knodell's. It was like a game of tennis which the Administration lost, badly. Mr. Leonard, what should happen when there is an unauthorized leak of classified information? Mr. Knodell, did that happen? Mr. Leonard? Mr. Knodell?

And, as we now know, between July 24, when the CIA first voices its concerns about the leak, and September 16, when DOJ finally decided to launch a criminal investigation, the White House did not conduct the Administrative investigation that is required by law in cases of unauthorized leaks of classified information.

(snip)

Which leaves us, two days later, to reflect on what the Hearing accomplished. Importantly, Waxman gave Valerie Wilson an opportunity to correct, under oath, many of the fictions the right has propagated about her in the last four years. Just as importantly, the Hearing served to remind us (as Patrick Fitzgerald did in his closing statements) that Valerie Wilson is a person, not an argument. Not only does she have kids and a husband. But she used to have an important role in protecting our country from the proliferation of nuclear weapons. She served our country, and the gratitude our country showed her was to expose her, her family, her colleagues, and the assets she recruited to a great deal of danger.

Actually, our entire nation has become endangered by right wing partisans more interested in winning bizarre 'technical' points than in the truth, the facts or responsible behavior. We can only hope the American people will continue to catch up to the complete failure and uselessness of today's right wing philosophy, even as the most partisan of Republicans continue to write fictions for Fox News or other right wing outlets. The only reason right wingers continue to write and speak their fictions is that they got away with it for the better part of fifteen years. It's time to turn the page on America's future.

Bush Administration Has No Credibility Left

I should qualify the title of this post somewhat. Unless members of the Bush Administration face subpoena power or the risk of perjury charges or other legal ramifications, they have no credibility. When they are caught in their contradictions, it is amazing how fast they begin to backtrack, or rather, give the appearance of backtracking. It takes an enormous dose of arrogance, for example, for a president to promise an investigation into the outing of a covert CIA operative and then discover four years later that no such internal investigation ever took place.

The arrogance just rolls on, without apology and without respect for our constitution or the important checks and balances built into our system of government. Every presidency since the founding of our republic has been subject to accountability. That is how our system of government was set up. But no president, Nixon included, has ever fought harder to avoid accountability nor given so much reason to call for accountability than George W. Bush. The firing of the US Attorneys for political reasons was an act of bad faith, effectively an abuse of power and an undermining the integrity of our government. The Washington Post has the story on US Attorney Carol Lam (a Bush appointee in his first term and respected Republican) and the sudden anxiety months ago within the Bush Administration that Lam was apparently doing her job with too much competence:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said in a television appearance yesterday that Lam "sent a notice to the Justice Department saying that there would be two search warrants" in a criminal investigation of defense contractor Brent R. Wilkes and Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who had just quit as the CIA's top administrator amid questions about his ties to disgraced former GOP congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham.

The next day, May 11, D. Kyle Sampson, then chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, sent an e-mail message to William Kelley in the White House counsel's office saying that Lam should be removed as quickly as possible, according to documents turned over to Congress last week.

"Please call me at your convenience to discuss the following," Sampson wrote, referring to "[t]he real problem we have right now with Carol Lam that leads me to conclude that we should have someone ready to be nominated on 11/18, the day her 4-year term expires."

The FBI raided Foggo's home and former CIA office on May 12. He was indicted along with Wilkes on fraud and money-laundering charges on Feb. 13 -- two days before Lam left as U.S. attorney.

Whether it's Republicans in Congress like Duke Cunningham or Tom DeLay, whether it's people who support the Republican Party like Jack Abramoff or Ralph Reed or Grover Norquist or Ann Coulter, or whether it's people in the Bush Administration like Scooter Libby or Alberto Gonzales or Karl Rove, it's becoming difficult to keep track of the scandals being perpetrated by this generation of right wing Republicans. There are still honest and competent Republicans around but they're obviously not in control of the GOP at the moment. The problem begins at the top where there is a complete lack of leadership. From now on, until there is serious accountability within the Bush Administration, everything these folks touch is going to have an odor to it.

The White House Scandals Just Keep Rolling On

I can't keep track anymore. If we include Congressional scandals on the Republican side with the growing number of White House scandals, it's hard to keep track of what's happening. It's all the media's fault, of course. If the media had been doing it's job from 2001 on, we could have dealt very easily with one scandal after another. Say one about every three months. That would be about twenty-five scandals by now. That's assuming the bums hadn't been voted out of office in 2002, or 2004 or 2006. Dealing with all these scandals at once is just plain hard work.

George W. Bush knows a lot about hard work. He tells us, after all, that being president is hard work. So hard that sometimes there just isn't time to do those pesky investigations that Bush keeps promising, such as determining who outed Valerie Plame Wilson and thereby ruined a CIA operation that dealt with the investigation of weapons of mass destruction, which happened to be what Mrs. Wilson was doing. Apparently it was too hard for Bush to do a proper internal investigation and see to it that those responsible were fired, if not prosecuted, or, at the very least, that people's security clearance was revoked. Think Progress has the story:

Dr. James Knodell, director of the Office of Security at the White House, revealed today that to his knowledge the White House has never ordered a probe, report, or sanctions as a result of the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame. “I have no knowledge of any investigation in my office,” he said.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) said he was “shocked” by Knodell’s testimony, adding that the White House’s lack of action was a “breach on top of a breach.”

Knodell claimed the White House did not investigate because there was an outside investigation taking place. But Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) noted that the investigation “didn’t start until months and months later, and [only] had the purpose of narrowly looking to see whether there was a criminal law violated.” Waxman asked, “But there was an obligation for the White House to investigate whether classified information was being leaked inappropriately, wasn’t there?” Knodell answered, “If that was the case, yes.”

Hang on to your hats folks. After six years of looking the other way, there's a change in Washington. Now it takes time to gather the facts, but things are beginning to happen. With the Democrats in charge, Congress is no longer obliged to listen to Karl Rove's threats. We're going to hear a lot of temper tantrums from the White House but the days of rubber stamping whatever President Bush wants is over. We're going to learn a lot in the next few months.

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.

E-Mails Show President and Republicans Avoiding Accountability

We should remember that the firing of the US Attorneys is not just a White House scandal. After all, there were Republican members of Congress putting pressure on these attorneys. No one should ever doubt that politicizing law enforcement has always been viewed as a quick route to a corrupt government. The media has all too frequently done a poor job of covering all the Republican nonsense in the White House and Congress over the last six years; in addition, too many members of the media have been providing sympathy for characters like Scooter Libby, who, even if he was a fall guy, was a knowing fall guy who lied and obstructed justice. The biggest mystery, question, scandal, whatever you want to call it, is why Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales still have jobs.

If you know how political wheeler dealer types avoid accountability, then it's important to pay attention to all the different revelations coming out about e-mails. One of the revelations is that these guys have multiple e-mail accounts whose sole purpose appears to be obscuring what kind of deals are going down in the White House, particularly political deals. Dan Froomkin of White House Watch posted this today:

....in spite of the embarrassing revelations contained in the e-mails turned over by the Justice Department to the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, the general rule at the White House is that if it's really sensitive, don't put it in writing -- certainly not in an e-mail.

That stuff gets archived.

The president himself, for instance, never uses e-mail at all.

And it now turns out that some of his aides sometimes avoid using their official White House e-mail accounts -- the ones that get automatically archived.

As I wrote in yesterday's column, Tuesday's document dump -- which initiated from the Justice Department, not the White House -- includes e-mails from J. Scott Jennings, Karl Rove's deputy at the White House, coming from an e-mail address at gwb43.com. That's a domain owned by the Republican National Committee.

This raises all sorts of questions. I put four of them to a White House spokesman yesterday, but haven't gotten a response.

The questions:

1) Does White House policy allow White House staffers to use non-White House e-mail addresses for official White House business? Does it prohibit it? What is the policy?

2) Would these e-mails be treated any differently from official White House e-mails when it comes to archiving or subpoena purposes?

3) Does it create either impropriety or the appearance of impropriety that gwb43.com is a domain owned by the Republican National Committee?

4) Do other White House staffers regularly use non-White House e-mail accounts for White House business, and if so, why?

Since then, several readers have e-mailed me with their own questions and comments. So I've added four more, passed those along as well, and still no response:

5) Does non-White House e-mail fulfill security requirements for White House communications?

6) If other non-White House e-mail accounts are used, who are the providers for all of the other accounts? (Any others besides the RNC?)

7) Does White House policy allow White House staffers to use non-White House e-mail addresses from their computers, even for non-official business? I'm told that during the Clinton administration, access to external e-mail, including Web mail, was shut off from White House (eop.gov) computers. Was there a conscious change of policy by the Bush administration? ...

What's all this official business doing on a Republican National Committee e-mail account? And why are there so many e-mail accounts associated with White House staffers? It's hard not think of other questions if this is evidence of avoiding the law, such as: just how many 'extra' cell phones are going in and out of the White House? And how many cell phones are being 'borrowed' by staffers from visitors who come to the White House? The President and his staff are conducting the people's business. We have a right to transparency and we have a right to answers.

Here's another story from ABC News:

New unreleased emails from top administration officials show the idea of firing all 93 U.S. attorneys was raised by Karl Rove in early January 2005, indicating Rove was more involved in the plan than previously acknowledged by the White House. The e-mails also show Alberto Gonzales discussed the idea of firing the attorneys en masse while he was still White House counsel—weeks before he was confirmed as attorney general.

The e-mails directly contradict White House assertions that the notion originated with recently departed White House counsel Harriet Miers and was her idea alone.

...the idea of firing all 93 U.S. attorneys was raised by Karl Rove. 'Arrogant' no longer is a sufficient word to describe the Bush Administration.

The American people have once again been lied to by the White House. We are not surprised. It is time for Congress to take off the kid gloves, return to normal practice and have these characters testify under oath.

Telling It Like It Is

Bush's failing presidency is in full meltdown. The only remaining embarrassment is how long the Republicans in Congress will keep trying to prop up our incompetent and corrupt president and vice president. Bush and Cheney are dangerous and are in serious need of adult supervision. It's time to stop pretending that we can ignore the problem.

Truthout has an article by Robert Scheer that simply tells it like it is when it comes to Dick Cheney:

While he is still as dangerous as any cornered animal, Cheney stands brightly revealed as the main culprit in cherry-picking the evidence to make the case for a stupid, failed war. He has been exposed as a vindictive, inflexible ideologue, who attempts to destroy all who publicly disagree with him, such as former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and Wilson's CIA agent wife, Valerie Plame Wilson. His extensive ties and loyal political service to energy and defense companies such as Halliburton (which now, in a burst of honesty, is moving its headquarters to Dubai), reveal him to be a man of deep corruption.

Like Nixon during Watergate, Cheney is now shrilly on the defensive. "National security made me do it!" he insists, clinging to pseudo-patriotism, that last refuge of scoundrels. But it is an argument that no longer flies with a public that has caught on to the rhythm of his screechy lies. After all, this is the leader, dominating a weak president, who pushed so hard for a complete occupation of a Muslim country not linked to 9/11. A man who hung his arguments for adventuristic war on known falsehoods, such as the attempted purchase of yellowcake uranium in Niger.

In fact, the recent terrorist bombing in Afghanistan that came too close to ending the vice president's life aptly underscored just how reckless the decision was to direct our policy away from the religious fanatics of al-Qaida, based in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and instead pour our resources into overthrowing Osama bin Laden's sworn enemy, Saddam Hussein.

For six years, Bush and Cheney have piled mistake upon mistake, lie upon lie, reckless gambles upon reckless gambles. Most people can't even follow all the scandals emanating from these two very rigid right wing ideologues who have no business running a government, let alone taking on the growing problems of the 21st century. And there are other scandals Republicans have given us.

Think of the lies and scandals surrounding Republicans that can be summarized in a word or short phrase. Leakgate. Abu Ghraib. Rendition. Bora Bora. Cakewalk. Mushroom cloud. Aluminum tubes. Yellowcake. Mobile weapons labs. Duke Cunningham. Hookergate. Jack Abramoff. Phone jamming. Katrina. Enron. Iraq reconstruction. Looting in Baghdad. Fallujah. Dubai ports deal. Walter Reed. Foleygate. Terri Schiavo. 'Pay to Play.' K Street project. Domestic spying. No bid contracts. Halliburton. Privatization. And now our latest scandal which doesn't quite have a name yet: the firing of eight U.S. attorneys purely for political purposes (feel free to add more in comments; I'm sure I've missed a few).

The media has not been helpful. The utter nonsense coming out of the mouths of pundits and some Washington reporters about Scooter Libby simply flies in the face of the facts. Americans are finally paying attention; Editor & Publisher has the numbers on Bush's possible pardon of Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney's former right hand man:

You might get a different impression from the tone of the media coverage, but a new CNN poll finds that less than 1 in 5 Americans back a pardon for former top White House and vice presidential aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Nearly 70 % of Americans oppose a presidential pardon for Libby after his conviction on perjury and other charges related to the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame.

Just 18% percent said they would support a pardon for Libby. "Meanwhile," CNN reports, "a narrow majority said they believe Cheney was part of a cover-up in the case."

The only Americans standing in the way of holding George W. Bush and Dick Cheney accountable are roughly about two dozen Republicans senators and perhaps sixty Republican representatives. But the walls are crumbling and the Republicans know it. Each day the scandals surrounding Bush and Cheney are growing—and one by one Republicans are throwing in the towel on those two reckless and incompetent men.

A Republican with a Conscience

There are still prominent Republicans left who care more about what's right for the nation than what's convenient for the Republican Party. Former presidential candidate and Republican, Pete McCloskey, was always known for his thoughtful integrity. Truthout carries an article by McCloskey that focuses on the growing scandal in the Bush Administration surrounding the firing of US Attorneys for political purposes:

One of the tragic moments in American history occurred in November 1973. This was the famous "Saturday Night Massacre," when President Richard Nixon, faced with the demand for incriminating tapes and documents by Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, took an action that would lead to his resignation from the presidency in disgrace less than a year later. Nixon ordered U.S. Attorney General Elliott Richardson to fire Cox. When Richardson refused and instead resigned, as did his second in command, William Ruckelshaus, U.S. Solicitor General Robert Bork stepped up to fire Cox.

(snip)

Now, 32 years later, another Republican attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, faces questioning by both the Senate and House Judiciary committees, on grounds that he has used his high office for political purposes to remove eight U.S. attorneys, several of whom had been involved in investigations of Republican congressmen, such as Randy "Duke" Cunningham of San Diego, Robert Ney of Ohio and John Doolittle of Rocklin (Placer County).

That action triggered a tough inquiry into the Watergate scandal by the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by U.S. Rep. Peter Rodino, a mild-mannered congressman from New Jersey. In July 1974, after seven months of public hearings, the committee in a bipartisan vote adopted several articles of impeachment....

In 1973, Pete McCloskey was the first member of Congress to openly call for the impeachment of Richard Nixon. There was something called accountability in those days and the American media was not shy in those years in calling for that accountability as well. Bush and Cheney committed acts in 2002 and 2003 that were impeachable when they fraudelently made a case for war in Iraq, then tried to cover up their fraud. However, impeachment could have been avoided if the media had simply done its job by shining a bright light on the administration's behavior. If Americans knew in 2004 what they know now, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would have been sent packing in the 2004 election.