[retired_rinkjustice]

I would turn around and ask him how moral killing, specifically the dropping of high ordinance explosive devices, was.

[retired_ashlia80]

Originally posted by Kizzak:
I would turn around and ask him how moral killing, specifically the dropping of high ordinance explosive devices, was.

I think he'd suggest killing someone who's attacking your country/way of life is perfectly justifiable, but putting your penis in their bottom is not.

Seems fairly arbitrary to me.

[retired_craftynm@pa.net]

Peter Pace ifb for having been my dad's XO, k?

[retired_the gizmo]

peter pace is a gump. you can tell just by looking at him that he's advanced by being the perfect obedient soldier more than ever showing any initiative of his own.

[retired_craftynm@pa.net]

Originally posted by Daaaaave:
peter pace is a gump. you can tell just by looking at him that he's advanced by being the perfect obedient soldier more than ever showing any initiative of his own.

Tbh, that's the assessment my dad made of him, too.

[retired_autumn]

Wow, there's some nice pelts waiting to be mounted on a wall. I should read "The Final Days" again so I can remember how the endgame works. :thup:

From the Tuesday NYTimes:

White House Said to Prompt Firing of Prosecutors


By DAVID JOHNSTON and ERIC LIPTON
Published: March 13, 2007

WASHINGTON, March 12 — The White House was deeply involved in the decision late last year to dismiss federal prosecutors, including some who had been criticized by Republican lawmakers, administration officials said Monday.

Last October, President Bush spoke with Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to pass along concerns by Republicans that some prosecutors were not aggressively addressing voter fraud, the White House said Monday. Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, was among the politicians who complained directly to the president, according to an administration official.

The president did not call for the removal of any specific United States attorneys, said Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman. She said she had “no indication” that the president had been personally aware that a process was already under way to identify prosecutors who would be fired.

But Ms Perino disclosed that White House officials had consulted with the Justice Department in preparing the list of United States attorneys who would be removed.

Within a few weeks of the president’s comments to the attorney general, the Justice Department forced out seven prosecutors.

Previously, the White House had said that Mr. Bush’s aides approved the list of prosecutors only after it was compiled.

The role of the president and his advisers in the prosecutor shakeup is likely to intensify calls by Congress for an investigation. It is the worst crisis of Mr. Gonzales’s tenure and provoked charges that the dismissals were a political purge threatening the historical independence of the Justice Department.

The idea of dismissing federal prosecutors originated in the White House more than a year earlier, White House and Justice officials said Monday.

In early 2005, Harriet E. Miers, then the White House legal counsel, asked a Justice Department official whether it would be feasible to replace all United States attorneys when their four-year terms expired, according to the Justice Department. The proposal came as the administration was considering which political appointees to replace in the second term, Ms. Perino said.

Ms. Miers sent her query to D. Kyle Sampson, a top aide to Mr. Gonzales, the Justice officials said. Mr. Sampson, who resigned Monday, replied that filling so many jobs at once would overtax the department. He suggested replacing a smaller group, according to e-mail messages and other memorandums compiled by the Justice Department.

Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, also had rejected the idea of replacing all the prosecutors, Ms. Perino said. But as Ms. Miers worked with Mr. Sampson on devising a list of attorneys to oust, Mr. Rove relayed to her complaints he had received that the Justice Department was not moving aggressively on voter fraud cases.

The White House continued to defend its handling of the dismissals.

“We continue to believe that the decision to remove and replace U.S. attorneys who serve at the pleasure of the president was perfectly appropriate and within our discretion,” Ms. Perino said.

“We stand by the Department of Justice assertion that they identified the seven U.S. attorneys who were removed, as they have said, based on performance and managerial reasons.”

On Monday Congressional Democrats demanded more information from the White House about the ousters, calling on Mr. Rove to testify about any discussions he had had about federal prosecutors. Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said he would seek a subpoena for Mr. Rove’s testimony if he did not appear voluntarily.

Justice Department officials have said they removed the United States attorney in Arkansas earlier last year to make room for a Republican Party lawyer and onetime adviser to Mr. Rove.

In the other cases, though, the department at first denied that the dismissals were performance related, and then said they were, citing managerial problems, lack of aggressiveness and conflicts over seeking the death penalty or enforcing immigration laws.

Justice Department officials said Monday that they had only learned recently about Mr. Sampson’s extensive e-mail and memos with Ms. Miers about the prosecutors. The communications were discovered Thursday when Mr. Sampson turned over the material to officials who were assembling documents in response to Congressional requests.

The documents did not provide a clear motive for the firings. Some suggested that department officials were dissatisfied with specific prosecutors, but none cited aggressive public corruption inquiries or failure to pursue voter fraud cases as an explicit reason to remove them.

On Dec. 4, 2006, three days before the dismissals, Mr. Sampson sent an e-mail message to the White House with a copy to Ms. Miers outlining plans to carry out the firings

“We would like to execute this on Thursday, Dec. 7,” Mr. Sampson wrote. Because some United States attorneys were still in Washington attending a conference, he planned to postpone telling them they were being fired. He wrote, “We want to wait until they are back home and dispersed to reduce chatter.”

Mr. Sampson predicted that dismissals might stir debate. “Prepare to Withstand Political Upheaval,” he wrote in describing what to expect as a result of the firings. “U.S Attorneys desiring to save their jobs aided by their allies in the political arena as well as the Justice Department community, likely will make efforts to preserve themselves in office. You should expect these efforts to be strenuous.”

Mr. Rove’s role in expressing concerns about prosecutors had emerged in recent days. The White House acknowledged Sunday that Mr. Rove had passed on complaints to Mr. Gonzales and Ms. Miers about David C. Iglesias, who was dismissed as the United States attorney in New Mexico. Mr. Rove’s role surfaced after the McClatchy Newspapers reported that a Republican Party official in New Mexico had complained to Mr. Rove in 2005 and again a year later about Mr. Iglesias’s failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation.

Concern about voter registration fraud turned political in several states in 2004 where there were close elections, including some lost narrowly by Republican candidates.

An associate of Mr. Rove said Monday that although he had learned in November that the prosecutors were being replaced, his conversation with Allen Weh, the Republican Party chairman in New Mexico, and subsequently with Mr. Gonzales, were brief exchanges at holiday parties and that they occurred after Dec. 7, when Mr. Iglesias and six other prosecutors were dismissed.

John McKay, the ousted United States attorney in Seattle, said last week while in Washington to testify before Congress that White House lawyers interviewing him for a possible federal judgeship had asked him why he had “mishandled” an investigation into voter fraud allegations in his state following the 2004 elections.

House and Senate investigators have already made clear that they want to examine exactly what role the White House, Mr. Sampson, Ms. Miers (who left the administration in January), Mr. Rove and other senior officials played in the matter. Last week, six of the fired prosecutors testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Officials said Mr. Sampson, who once worked at the Bush White House interviewing candidates for United States attorney, was largely behind the effort at the Justice Department.

This week, the United States attorney dispute will be aired on the Senate floor during debate over legislation to roll back a provision of the antiterrorism law that allows President Bush to appoint interim United States attorneys indefinitely.


Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting.

The question, as Paul Krugman has noted, is only partially about why the seven were dismissed. More importantly, did any of the attorneys who kept their jobs keep them because they played ball? If the Bushies tried to influence elections by getting October surprise allegations about Democrats into the open, then they have to be toast.

I like Bush the Don, by the way. He passes on 'concerns' about certain prosecutors, and then claims to be totally unaware that a process to fire them is underway. Look, your honor, all I said was, "I hear this guy's causing trouble." I never told anyone to whack him!

[retired_google]

Seattle Times localization

Former U.S. Attorney John McKay said Monday night he was "stunned" to hear President Bush told Attorney General Alberto Gonzales last October that Bush had received complaints about U.S. attorneys who were not energetically investigating voter-fraud cases.

McKay doesn't know if Republican unhappiness over his handling of the 2004 election cost him his job as U.S. Attorney for Western Washington, but the new revelations contained in a Washington Post story are sure to reignite questions about McKay's dismissal and whether it was connected to Washington state's hotly contested governor's race.

"Had anyone at the Justice Department or the White House ordered me to pursue any matter criminally in the 2004 governor's election, I would have resigned," McKay said. "There was no evidence, and I am not going to drag innocent people in front of a grand jury."

The conversation between Bush and Gonzales, along with e-mails and documents that the White House plans to turn over to Congress today, suggests the firings of McKay and seven other U.S. attorneys last year may have been politically motivated, despite previous Justice Department and White House denials, according to The Washington Post.

It is not clear whether the materials shed new light on McKay's firing.

Nonetheless, Bush's concerns about voter-fraud investigations will surely heighten the spotlight on how McKay monitored the 2004 race -- and how local and federal Republican officials reacted to his inquiry.

McKay insists that top prosecutors in his office and agents from the FBI conducted a "very active" review of allegations of fraud during the election but filed no charges and did not convene a federal grand jury because "we never found any evidence of criminal conduct."

McKay detailed the work of his office in a recent interview. He spoke out because he believed Republican supporters of Dino Rossi, still bitter over his narrow loss to Democrat Christine Gregoire, continue to falsely portray him and his office as indifferent to allegations of electoral fraud.

McKay also wanted to make it clear that he pressed ahead with a preliminary investigation, despite the hesitation of Craig Donsanto, the longtime chief of the Election Crimes branch of the Department of Justice, who ultimately concurred with McKay that no federal crimes had been committed in the election.

"No controversy"
"There should be no controversy at the Department of Justice, or anywhere else in the federal government, about how the 2004 election was reviewed," McKay said.

McKay's work on the 2004 election has become a national issue since he appeared last Tuesday at hearings into the Justice Department's firings of McKay and seven other U.S. attorneys in December. McKay testified that in late-2004 or early-2005 he received a call from Ed Cassidy, then chief of staff for Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., who asked about the status of ongoing investigations of voter fraud.

McKay testified that he immediately cut off the call, telling Cassidy it would be improper for him to discuss the status of any future investigations with Cassidy.

McKay also said that during a meeting last summer with former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and Deputy Counsel William Kelley, to discuss McKay's candidacy to become a federal judge, he was asked to explain why some Washington state Republicans believed he "mishandled" the 2004 governor's race.

McKay described in detail what happened inside his office as controversy mounted over the 2004 balloting.

Two machine counts initially declared Rossi the winner. A third hand recount declared Gregoire the winner, by just 129 votes over Rossi.

GOP sought investigation

Republicans sued in Chelan County Superior Court to have the vote declared invalid because of tabulation errors, improper ballots and alleged fraud.

From the time Republicans filed the case in January until it went to trial in Wenatchee in late May 2005, several prominent Republicans, including former Sen. Slade Gorton and state Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance, publicly called on McKay and the Justice Department to launch a criminal probe.

McKay says he and four attorneys in his office worked closely with the FBI and the Department of Justice to monitor complaints of criminal wrongdoing.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Arlen Storm, who had received special Justice Department training on election crimes before the 2004 race, did the bulk of the day-to-day work. Floyd Short, the chief of the complex crimes unit, closely supervised Storm. Short also spoke regularly with Donsanto and others in Washington, D.C.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Bartlett and Jeffrey Sullivan, former chief of the criminal division and now McKay's interim replacement as U.S. attorney, also "were directly involved," McKay said.

Bartlett and Sullivan declined to comment because of Justice Department policies that prevent them from discussing a preliminary investigation, "especially one that did not result in a publicly filed court document," said Emily Langlie, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's office.

Short confirmed his involvement and said McKay was himself highly engaged on election issues.

McKay said one of the first actions he took on the 2004 race came in response to a request from one of his harshest critics.

Tom McCabe, executive vice president of the Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW), contacted McKay's office in late 2004 or early 2005, alleging he had evidence of forged signatures on absentee ballots cast for Gregoire.

After talking to McCabe, McKay said, he called Mark Ferbrache, supervisory special agent at the FBI, and asked him to assign Special Agent Joe Quinn to review McCabe's evidence.

McCabe confirms he received a phone call from Quinn a few days later, and McCabe sent him documents supporting his forgery allegations.

But McCabe remains dissatisfied with Quinn's response.

"[Quinn] seemed distracted, almost bothered that he was talking to me about it," McCabe said. "He never instituted an investigation; no one was ever questioned.

"It started me wondering whether the U.S. Attorney was doing his job," McCabe said.

McCabe subsequently made repeated calls on the White House to fire McKay. McKay said Quinn examined McCabe's materials "and it was not the conclusion of the FBI that they were forgeries."

An FBI spokesman declined to comment.

One of the biggest controversies of the 2004 race was the casting of hundreds of ballots by convicted felons.

McKay asked Sullivan to create a task force of federal, state and county prosecutors to look into how and why the felons voted in violation of state laws.

Ultimately, Sullivan told McKay "there was no disagreement on the task force" that a federal case could not be brought on the felon voters.

Most of the felons who voted in the 2004 election, according to McKay, received ballots in the mail from the state of Washington. Therefore, he said, it would have been extremely difficult to prove in court that they knew it was unlawful for them to vote, but did it anyway.

Prosecutors and FBI agents took notice when Republican attorney Dale Foreman said during his opening statement in the trial in Wenatchee that he had evidence of fraud in King County.

"I was shocked to see him use the words 'ballot-stuffing' because that is a crime," McKay said. "If you say that, you are ethically bound to prove that."

The team closely followed the testimony and evidence introduced at the trial but saw nothing to confirm federal crimes had taken place.

"No stone unturned"

McKay said that at the conclusion of the trial, Sullivan, Short, Ferbrache and others conducted a conference call with Foreman to see if there was any evidence of criminality that had not been introduced at the trial. "We left absolutely no stone unturned," McKay said. "We were assured by [Foreman] that he did not have any evidence."

Short confirmed the call, and its conclusions.

Foreman did not respond to calls seeking comment.

After the conclusion of the trial and the phone call with Foreman, neither the U.S. Attorney's Office nor the FBI received other credible evidence of federal crimes during the 2004 race.

Consequently, McKay said, "I moved on to other things."

[retired_autumn]

It's also irritating to know that these clowns had US attorneys running around on BS snipe hunts when there was real work to be done.

On a side note, the last time we had a mayoral election here in Philly, a story broke a month or so before the election that the mayor's office had been bugged by the feds, who were conducting a major probe of 'pay to play' misconduct. My dad's Republican friends went into full celebration mode, thinking this would swing the election to the Republican challenger.

But pops was pretty hip to the fact that the city's black voters weren't going to stand for some government conspiracy trying to take down their mayor and replace him with a white guy. He was like, "This election's over." And he was right.

Street, btw, remains unindicted. Maybe they were just trying to catch him giving away tips on where to find good pizza.

[retired_autumn]

So Gonzales gave a press conference this afternoon to address the attorney scandal, and said, essentially, 'I believe in accountability. I take full responsibility for this mistake... But I knew nothing about what was going on.'

I didn't hang on every word, but it appears that none of the questions were about what role Karl Rove or the President had in the firings. That boggles the mind. Apparently the DOJ beat reporters are one step up from correspondents for Teen Beat magazine.

Today's money quote, from Tony Snow, who apparently was asked about the President's role in this:

The chief White House spokesman, Tony Snow, said today that President Bush had "made no recommendations on specific individuals."

"We don't have anything to indicate the president made any calls on specific U.S. attorneys," Mr. Snow told reporters in Mexico, as Mr. Bush neared the end of his trip to South and Central America.

Look how precise the language is. :o

[retired_autumn]

To keep this US Attorney story linked, however tenuously, to the upcoming election, I'll mention that, on the day that the White House was getting killed by this FUBAR situation, Hillary decided to provoke a tabloid distraction by invoking the phrase 'vast, right wing conspiracy' again.

Wha-?

You decided to grab some headlines and make the news about you? Today? Gunh. Al Sharpton, similarly, gave Hannity something else to talk about thanks to some pseudo-beef with Obama. Translation: Obama hasn't paid me off yet.

But again, why today Al?

Let's take stock:

- Gonzales is getting hung out to dry. Money quote from Wednesday's NYTimes:

The two Republicans, who spoke anonymously so they could share private conversations with senior White House officials, said top aides to Mr. Bush, including Fred F. Fielding, the new White House counsel, were concerned that the controversy had so damaged Mr. Gonzales’s credibility that he would be unable to advance the White House agenda on national security matters, including terrorism prosecutions.

“I really think there’s a serious estrangement between the White House and Alberto now,” one of the Republicans said.

That means Gonzales might be done within three months of the Dems getting subpoena power? That's how much you suck, buddy. :thup:

- If anyone's interested, the DOJ has released a big document dump to the House Judiciary Committee that you can download from their web page here There's plenty of damning details if you wade through them (takes about an hour maybe?). But to highlight:

Here are the standards used to judge the performances of the USAttorneys, at least the ones that Gonzales' Chief of Staff (D. Kyle Sampson, who just resigned, ofc) drew up without ever letting his boss know about it. (Ahem.)

(Quoting from an e-mail he sent Harriet Miers)

"To be clear, putting aside the question of expiring terms, the analysis on the chart I gave you is as follows:

bold = Recommend retaining; strong U.S. Attorneys who have produced, managed well, and exhibited loyalty to the President and Attorney General.

<STRIKE>strikeout</STRIKE> = Recommend removing; weak U.S. Attorneys who have been ineffectual managers and prosecutors, chafed against Administration initiatives, etc.

nothing = No recommendation; have not distinguished themselves either positively or negatively.

One of the most entertaining bits, however, is the strategy memo attributed to no one, entitled "Plan for Replacing Certain United States Attorneys," so you know it was written by a lawyer. It is a very detailed listing of what needs to be done, and who needs to be notified of the changes. They're very careful because they know they're stirring up a crapstorm. The fun part:

Direct and indirect appeals of the Administration's determination to seek these resignations will likely be directed at: various White House offices, including [ various lower level people are named, as is Attorney General Gonzales. He's the highest ranking person on the list, as far as I can tell. ] Recipients of such "appeals" must respond identically:

What? U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President (there is no right, nor should there be any expectation, that U.S. Attorneys would be entitled to serve beyond their four-year term).

Who decided? The Administration made the determination to seek the resignations (not any specific person at the White House or Department of Justice).

Why me? The Adminsitration is grateful for your service, but wants to give someone else the chance to serve in your district.

Who decided? The Administration. Can I talk to this Administration? Who do you want? The Administration. Who's on first?

It is also notable that the plans for executing this plan all note that the AG (Gonzales) will make a call to notify Senator Kyl (AZ) that his USA has been fired when the calls letting attorneys know they've been fired are being made simultaneously. So, is it plausible that on the day of the hit, these underlings were going to walk up to Gonzales, hand him a phone, and tell him to just read what they'd written down for him? (Hmm, don't answer that.) Yeah, no. I think he knew what was being cooked up, even if he staffed out the details.

Who signed off on this plan?

We're a go for the US Atty plan. WH leg, political, and communications have signed off and acknowledged that we have to be committed to following through once the pressure comes.

Ha ha. Good luck keeping this limited to DOJ, or Harriet Miers.

Apparently, according to the background memos that Sampson had prepared for everyone, US Attorneys serve 4 year terms. Thus, they expire at the end of the President's first term. In both Reagan and Clinton's tenures (the last two-term presidents, and thus the only ones affected by this problem in the last few decades) they let the USAs stay on indefinitely -- that is, until the end of their presidencies. So Bush was at least breaking precedent.

But it also appears true that the 'serve at the pleasure of the President' excuse is airtight, even if it is a lame 'get out of jail free' card that covers everything. The problem for the White House is that the reasons for the firing, which should be 'STFU, it's within the President's rights to do this, and he did it', got out in the open instead, and it looks like the Attorneys were fired for an enormously shady reason: because they didn't carry enough water for Republicans. Asked whether or not there was any criminal misconduct in doing this, one talking head on TV said that there weren't any specific statutes that knew to be violated, but only because this was the sort of thing that no one would ever contemplate happening.

So conventional wisdom says that Bush, Rove and other big heads may be safe from any criminal wrongdoing, but what they did was so obviously wrong that they have to be punished for it...?

We'll see. Apologies is this is tl;dr.