So the word is that so far, Abu Goner has repeated some variation of “I can’t recall” 55 times, and the day’s not but half over. Given his role in constructing the torture memos, shouldn’t someone point out to him that if that’s good enough for the Senate, it should be a satisfactory answer for our detainees in Gitmo and around the world? The waterboarding should stop as soon as the prisoner says he “can’t recall.” PoliticsTV has recorded the first hour and more of the testimony for those who missed it.  Read more 

Click here for all the weekend reading you could want. The details:

WASHINGTON - Internal Bush administration e-mails suggest that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales may have played a bigger role than he has acknowledged in the plan to fire several U.S. attorneys.

The e-mails, delivered to Congress Friday night, show that Gonzales attended an hourlong meeting on the firings on Nov. 27, 2006 - 10 days before seven U.S. attorneys were told to resign. The attorney general’s participation in the session calls into question his assertion that he was essentially in the dark about the firings.

At a news conference last week, Gonzales said that he was aware that his aides were working on a plan to fire several U.S. attorneys but that he left the details to Kyle Sampson, his then-chief of staff, and other aides. Sampson agreed on Friday to testify about his role in the firings at a Senate hearing next week.

“We never had a discussion about where things stood,” Gonzales said on March 13. “What I knew was that there was an ongoing effort that was led by Mr. Sampson … to ascertain where we could make improvements in U.S. attorney performances around the country.”  Read more 

Hey, Josh, everybody- is this relevant?

Former Republican super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, sentenced to almost six years in prison for his fraudulent purchase of a South Florida gambling fleet, can receive a reduced sentence if he continues to assist prosecutors in a far-reaching Washington public corruption probe, federal officials said Wednesday.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Miami filed the paperwork seeking to reduce Abramoff’s 70-month prison term stemming from the SunCruz Casinos case, but did not specify any time off his sentence.

Instead, prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Paul Huck to delay that decision until a hearing is held to weigh Abramoff’s value as a witness in the Washington influence-peddling investigation.  Read more 

May a Thousand Pitchforks Rise! There’s audio, so be sure to click. Or just turn on your radio, this one is going to hit the airwaves. Details:

Congressman Chris Van Hollen, Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), announced today the DCCC is running a radio ad against Congresswoman Heather Wilson (R-NM-1) calling on her to come clean about her role in the U.S. Attorney scandal. The ad will begin airing in New Mexico during drive time this morning and run for five days.

“A federal prosecutor was fired only after he refused to bend to Heather Wilson’s political pressure. Heather Wilson must come clean with people of New Mexico’s first congressional district,” Chairman Van Hollen said. “Heather Wilson owes her constituents an explanation – who called her about David Ingelias and who did she call after Ingelias refused to break the law and discuss a sealed indictment?”  Read more 

Ho ho ho. This is going to be soooo much fun. Will the Toddler in Chief dare to veto this? I bet he will.

Senate votes to repeal secret Midnight Patriot Act provision that granted AG power to appoint interim USAtty’s without Senate confirmation:

The Senate voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to end the Bush administration’s ability to unilaterally fill U.S. attorney vacancies as a backlash to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ firing of eight federal prosecutors.

… With a 94-2 vote, the Senate passed a bill that canceled a Justice Department-authored provision in the Patriot Act that had allowed the attorney general to appoint U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation.  Read more 

Forget Gonzo, let’s tie Rove to criminals more firmly, shall we?

In 2002, GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff was secretly lobbying on behalf of the Guam Superior Court against a judicial reform bill pending in the U.S. Congress. Abramoff won this contract by telling Court officials he had access to then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) and other Republican leaders. Perhaps due to Abramoff’s lobbying, the judicial reform bill died at the end of the 107th Congress in 2002. Instead of paying Abramoff directly, the Court funneled its payments through 36 separate $9,000 checks made out to a lawyer named Howard Hills in Laguna Beach, California.

In November 2002, a grand jury in Guam began investigating the secret lobbying arrangement. The day after the grand jury issued subpoenas, the Bush Administration demoted the U.S. prosecutor in charge of the investigation, Frederick Black, who had been the acting U.S. attorney in Guam for 12 years. Black was replaced by Leonardo Rapadas, an attorney recommended to Karl Rove by the Guam Republican Party, and barred from investigating public corruption cases.  Read more 

Palast slams another one out of the park. Posted in full, sickening detail:

Bush’s New US Attorney a Criminal?

BBC Television had exposed 2004 voter attack scheme by appointee Griffin, a Rove aide.
Black soldiers and the homeless targeted.

There’s only one thing worse than sacking an honest prosecutor. That’s replacing an honest prosecutor with a criminal.

There was one big hoohah in Washington yesterday as House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers pulled down the pants on George Bush’s firing of US Attorneys to expose a scheme to punish prosecutors who wouldn’t bend to political pressure.

But the Committee missed a big one: Timothy Griffin, Karl Rove’s assistant, the President’s pick as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas. Griffin, according to BBC Television, was the hidden hand behind a scheme to wipe out the voting rights of 70,000 citizens prior to the 2004 election.

Key voters on Griffin’s hit list: Black soldiers and homeless men and women. Nice guy, eh? Naughty or nice, however, is not the issue. Targeting voters where race is a factor is a felony crime under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  Read more 

This won’t surprise anyone here, but I found this telling:

On the February 15 edition of Fox News’ Special Report with Brit Hume, Fox News national correspondent Catherine Herridge uncritically reported the assertion by Justice Department officials that “the decision to force out” seven U.S. attorneys recently “was based on, quote, ’performance-related issues.’ ” But contrary to the Justice Department’s assertion, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty has conceded that performance played no role in at least one of those cases: the forced resignation of H.E. “Bud” Cummins III as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas. Moreover, the Justice Department has provided no evidence publicly backing up the claim of “performance-related issues,” and, according to a February 14 McClatchy Newspapers article, “at least five of [the U.S. attorneys who were fired] received positive job evaluations before they were ordered to step down.”

Cummins was replaced by J. Timothy Griffin, a former research director for the Republican National Committee and White House senior adviser Karl Rove. During a February 6 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on matter, McNulty said that regarding the Cummins replacement, “the fact is that there was a change made there that was not connected to, as was said, the performance of the incumbent, but more related to the opportunity to provide a fresh start with a new person in that position.”

According to a February 16 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette article noted by the weblog TPMMuckraker.com, Griffin, currently serving as the interim U.S. attorney, has decided that he “no longer wants the job permanently” and will not submit his name for Senate confirmation. Under a provision in the 2006 renewal of the USA Patriot Act, interim U.S. attorneys can remain in office until the Senate confirms a replacement. Before this provision was enacted, the attorney general could appoint an interim U.S. attorney who could remain in office for up to 120 days, after which the local federal district court could appoint someone to serve until a permanent successor was confirmed. The provision was reportedly added by the office of then-Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA), who said at the February 6 Judiciary Committee hearing that a member of his staff had inserted the provision without his knowledge. On February 15, Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) blocked Democratic efforts to pass legislation that would reverse the provision’s changes.  Read more