Finally, “somebody” said it. Kudos to Greg Gordon and David Goldstein:

In recent weeks, McClatchy Newspapers has recounted this broad effort to use the power of the Justice Department to affect the outcome of the 2006 election. McClatchy found that, as U.S. attorney, Schlozman brought voter-fraud indictments days before the election against four people who were registering voters for a liberal group in Kansas City. The hotly contested election resulted in Missouri Republican Sen. Jim Talent’s defeat, handing control of the U.S. Senate to Democrats.

That’s the story. Not that we expect the cocktail wienie-munching courtiers at Pravda on the Potomac and Izvestia on the Hudson to cover it, of course.

A person familiar with the congressional inquiry, who insisted upon anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information, described Schlozman as a central figure because he ties together “all of the threads” of the investigation.

According to the person, Schlozman “cleaned out” career lawyers in the Civil Rights Division, replaced them with partisans and was involved in using “vote suppression mechanisms” of voting rights laws, including supporting actions to pare lists of registered voters and backing state laws that toughened voter identification requirements before the 2006 congressional election.

What a surprise. The more we did into what Bush is doing to the “unitary executive,” the more rancid it gets. As usual, the whole fucking barrel is full of “bad apples.”

NOTE Josh, I think, first framed the issue as “affecting election outcomes”, and I think he’s right, so it’s excellent to see McClatchy pick this up.

We’re not talking about a President’s right to bring in his own team, or putting his own policies in place, or even “politicizing,” whatever that means.

We are talking about using the criminal justice system to bring fake indictments against Democrats right before elections!

We are talking about stealing people’s right to vote!

As always, the Republicans define political deviancy down, down, down, down.

UPDATE For Justice shenanigains in Missouri, see Tom’s post here.