I didn’t know there was a CSPAN radio, but there is:

4:30 p.m. LIVE Senate debate on S.J.Res.14, joint resolution expressing no confidence in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales  Read more 

That’s the bottom line. But we’re going to have to hack through thickets of obfuscation to get there. Work with me here:

Today, the VRWC needs to protect The Non-Answerer from truthteller Jim Comey. And Fred Hiatt comes through right on cue.

You remember Pepperdine, right? The school that tried to hire Ken Starr, even though he hadn’t finished burning through $20 million investigating a blow job as part of the VRWC’s failed attempt to bring Clinton down? Well, Fred Hiatt has turned over the Op-Ed pages to Pepperdine’s Christianist and Federalist Society operative Douglas W. Kmiec. And Doug—I hope I may call him Doug—really sits up and works:

James Comey’s Senate testimony on Tuesday was staggeringly histrionic. It has, as Sen. Arlen Specter suggested, the dramatic flair of the Saturday Night Massacre. Presidential emissaries seeking the signature of a critically ill man only to be headed off at the hospital room door by a Jimmy Stewart-like hero defending the law over the pursuit of power. Frank Capra, call your office.

There are several problems with this scene. First, the comparison to Watergate is wholly inapt.

Notice the inartful pivot in the word “scene.” Doug’s lead implies that the “scene” is at the hospital, but, with the word “Watergate,” he reveals that the “scene” he really has in mind is in the Committee room. So, the “histrionics” don’t apply to the grotesque “scene” of Gonzo and Card trying to force a sedated, suffering, post-operative patient flat on his back in a hospital bed to sign off on a program he’s refused to sign off on when well—and what that says about Gonzo, Card, and the man they service—or to Comey rushing to the room to prevent them from doing so, after a call from the sick man’s wife.

No, no. The “histrionics” have to do with—get this—“defending the law over the pursuit of power.” Well, good Rovian that he is, Doug goes straight for the enemy’s strength.** Here’s what he has to say:

Watergate involved a real crime — breaking and entering, with a phenomenally stupid coverup that also fit the definition of criminal obstruction. And the underlying motivation for Richard Nixon’s demise was raw politics. Comey’s tale lacks crime and this venal political intrigue.

“Comey’s tale lacks crime”?! Lacks “venal political intrigue”?!?! Doug, Doug—Little man, where have you been living?  Read more 

Nice to see the purported “theory” of the unilateral executive being called out for what it is: An “aggrandized claim.”

 Read more 

Same deal with Gonzales and Ashcroft:

Comey testified Tuesday that when he refused to certify the program, Gonzales and Card headed to Ashcroft’s sick bed in the intensive care unit at George Washington University Hospital.

When Gonzales appealed to Ashcroft, the ailing attorney general lifted his head off the pillow and in straightforward terms described his views of the program, Comey said. Then he pointed out that Comey, not Ashcroft, held the powers of the attorney general at that moment.

Gonzales and Card then left the hospital room, Comey said.

“I was angry,” Comey told the panel. “I thought I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man who did not have the powers of the attorney general.”

“Thought” you say? That’s what you did see!

There they are, hovering round Ashcroft’s bed:

Sign, Goddammit! Sign, and the pain will stop!

Nice picture, eh?  Read more 

No longer is there honor among thieves Republicans! Abu G heaves McNulty under the bus:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday he relied on his resigning deputy more than any other aide to decide which U.S. attorneys should be fired last year.

“You have to remember, at the end of the day, the recommendations reflected the views of the deputy attorney general. He signed off on the names,” Gonzales told reporters at a National Press Club forum in Washington. “And he would know better than anyone else, anyone in this room, anyone — again, the deputy attorney general would know best about the qualifications and the experiences of the United States attorneys community, and he signed off on the names.”

O.M.F.G. Gosh, remember those happy days, those innocent days the Republicans were the accountability party?  Read more 

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.  Read more 

Okay, at the last minute he was reminded that what he was doing was unconstitutional and added a sentence. But if Murray Waas is to be believed, there’s something really, really fishy here.

Can’t quote a lot out of the National Journal, and this is a moderately long piece. Really quite balanced—all relevant “Clinton did it too!” excuses are noted. But Abu Al basically delegated to Sampson and Goodling—who had maybe one actual prosecution between them as legal experience—authority to take dictation from the White House on hiring and firing decisions of all non-Civil Service Justice Department employees.

And hide it from Congress.

oopsie…Abu Al may have to come back and sit with the dunce Can’t Recall cap on again for awhile longer.  Read more 

Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s Friday night and you aint’ got nobody, you got some money cuz you just got paid, how you wish you had someone to talk to, you’re in an awful way…oh waitaminit, that’s Saturday night. Never mind.*

New DoJ Docco Dump over at Josh’s Place. Should you be sufficiently bored, determined to restore Constitutional government, or out of beer, give it a look-through and help them compile Things That Need To Be Noted.

It’s a PDF file as usual just to make it more of a pain in the ass so you won’t look at it. Are you gonna fall for that cheesy a tactic? I didn’t think so.  Read more 

Whatever Abu G did, whatever he signed off on, whatever Constitutional restraint he ruled was “quaint,” that’s the reason Bush is keeping him on.

(Loyalty with the Bush clan is famously one-way; if Bush felt he could throw ABu G under a bus, he would, just like with Rummy. So the question becomes, why doesn’t he?)

The Globe’s Peter S. Canellos:

But the administration’s willingness to withstand its own party’s disdain for Gonzales probably springs not from loyalty but from self-interest: The last thing the president needs right now is confirmation hearings for a new attorney general.

It’s well known that the administration is seeking to maximize its own powers. This effort takes many forms, from asserting the right to bypass laws that Bush himself has signed, to asserting the authority to hold prisoners without trials, to forbidding Congress from seeing information the administration deems sensitive to national security, to asserting its own, highly debatable interpretations of the Geneva Conventions.

There may well be other, similar claims of power that the public does not know about, leading to secret actions that the president believes are justified through his authority as commander in chief.

Just… Eesh. This is the best explanation for keeping Gonzo on that I’ve heard so far. And since the Globe is the paper that broke the signing statements story, and got Pulitzer for it, p0wning the Times, I give them some credence in this area.  Read more 

Sob, I’m still upset that the man behind this effort isn’t president.  Read more 

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 

Film at 11: WaPo fluffs Gonzales before his testimony. They just can’t help themselves, can they? But this fluffery is even more creepy than usual. WaPo’s Peter Baker:

On the Hill, Gonzales Gets His Chance at Redemption

Gack. Here’s the quote that made me reach for the bucket I keep handy by the side of my desk whenever I read about Republicans. Of Bush and Gonzales, Baker writes:

Their friendship deepened during the many last-minute death-penalty petitions Gonzales handled for Bush.

[’Scuse me. [Heaves.] There. That’s better.]

Oh. My. Fucking. God. Do you realize what Baker’s writing about? Does Baker? Could Baker?  Read more 

Everybody already hates the WaPo redesign because it makes it harderto find the news. But now they’re really going to hate it, because they’ve put the comics right there next to Fred Hiatt’s delusional mumblings. Abu G, in a desperate attempt to hold onto his job, pens an Op-Ed. Hilarity ensues:

[ABU G] What began as a well-intentioned management effort to identify where, among the 93 U.S. attorneys, changes in leadership might benefit the department, and therefore the American people, has become an unintended public controversy.

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Let’s look at what Daniel Metcalfe, a now retired Justice career professional, has to say about how Bush and Gonzales turned the Justice Department into an arm of the RNC:  Read more 

Look, I’ll try to make it simple. The Bush administration isn’t going to willingly cooperate on the email matter. Nah.Gonna.Happen. So what is the remedy? We already know of one felony (obstruction of justice by Rove re: Fitz) and I have no doubt there are many more. Is the Congress coequal or not? Does the Judiciary committee work with the Intel committee or not (Feinstein sits on both)? Are Democrats always going to bring a knife to a gun fight or not? Talk is cheap. Pick up the phone, Senator Feinstein, and have a closed door chat with the NSA. Or, someone tell me a better way to get these emails. Also: SIM cards- the Bushies used Blackberries to send some of these emails. SIM cards are forever. Chutzpah isn’t the word I’d use, “arrogance” and “drunk on power” come to mind instead:

In a letter to Mr. Leahy and Representative John Conyers Jr., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Mr. Fielding, the White House counsel, said the administration was prepared to produce e-mail from the national committee, but only as part of a “carefully and thoughtfully considered package of accommodations” — in other words, only as part of the offer for Mr. Rove and the others to appear in private.  Read more 

It’ll be all over the interwebs today, but I just want to make a simple statement: it is beyond insulting that the White House would claim they “can’t find” some of the emails that Congress wants to see. That is ridiculous. First off, emails are forever- you can do your own homework if you don’t know this, but emails and the nature of the net combine to form a, ahem, paper trail that just isn’t that hard for computer experts to follow. Secondly, hello, NSA, CIA, DoD and FBI domestic spying, anyone? They probably have a copy of every email every progressive activist has ever sent stored in triplicate on government servers, and they want us to believe they can’t find their own? Give me a break.  Read more 

Abu G, AP, fifteen minutes ago:  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 

Dear White House:

Re: your earlier requests to hide lying liars behind the closed doors of secrecy in the name of ’compromise.’ No.

Love,
The House  Read more 

Clammyc says no. Some highlights:

However, that isn’t really why I am writing this – I am looking more at WHY they won’t testify as opposed to the underlying issues, documents, and possible crimes (I will say that the fired attorneys will most likely provide enough information regarding whether any “obstruction of justice” charges would be warranted with or without Rove and Miers).

It all obviously goes to the matter of Executive Privilege. And the question is – will Congress fight the Administration all the way to the Supreme Court (only to run out the clock and possibly lose in this case anyway), or will they focus on all other areas of this case and determine whether charges can be brought or if this will truly become yet another slimy but political matter. The upshot if it remaining political is that it will damage the republicans – the downside is that it pisses off the American public because Congress was spending too much time on this as opposed to getting us out of Iraq and promoting policies that are good for We the People.

Whether this technically should even fall under executive privilege is a question in and of itself – but will likely be resolved through negotiations or in court.  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 

Dammit, I’ve got to go be in meatspace now, so I can’t watch the fireworks. Here’s some links for those researching the story. Don’t hang any of the traitors until I get back.

Geiger has a bombshell.

NDN interviews Lam.

Klein on Iglesias.

Bullshit protector for when you hear “Clinton did it too.”

FDL action alert.

Fitzgerald’s real rating and more.  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