sputter ... sputter ... obviously ... sputter ... it must be ... sputter ... sputter ... sputter ...

Can you say, Kiss Abu Gonzales' ass goodbye!!

Carol Lam was on the trail of Republican corruption. 'Nuff said.

American Hawk sounds desperate. It's difficult to defend the indefensible.

Why do they dump these things. Do they really believe that we aren't going to connect the dots?

It sure doesn't seem like anyone at DOJ was seriously pissed off at Lam over immigration issues.

Nonsense Kevin. 19 members of Congress including Duke Cunningham were seriously pissed off at Lam's incompetent handling of immigration criminals.

Link

"The 19 members of Congress wrote Gonzales in October of 2005 complaining that they felt Lam was too lax on illegal immigration. One of the members of Congress who signed the letter complaining about Lam was Congressman Cunningham "

so some dumbass Congressmen who knew nothing about Lam's resources or the law were bitching about this--but DOJ knew she was doing as well as anyone could.

until they needed a CYA explanation for her firing, then she had "performance issues" or whatever.
uh-huh. It's all so very complicated and confusing--can someone from Powerline please explain this for me?

That had to be fake Al, right?

The word you're looking for is flack.

flack – noun Sometimes Disparaging. 1. press agent. 2. publicity. –verb (used without object) 3. to serve as a press agent or publicist: to flack for a new rock group. –verb (used with object) 4. to promote; publicize: to flack a new record.

Anyway, can someone answer Catherine Martin's question for me?

I'm always amazed at how stupid these people are in addition to being wholly corrupt.

Tasia Scolinos is a piker. She could, with a little thought, have worded that e-mail so as to imply that they were pursuing legitimate complaints against these attorneys. Instead, she puts in writing, for the review of all and sundry, the fact that they were freaking inventing excuses to get rid of these people.

Did everyone involved in this go around arrogantly assuming this stuff would never see the light of day? Certainly, with the non-performance of Congress over the past six years, they might be forgiven for thinking so, but sheesh, most criminals and bad actors at least make an attempt to cover their tracks.

Ron, I just don't know, the answer to your question, but I can't wait to see the contents of the stuff they're withholding, can you?

Can we just pause for a moment to contemplate that AG Gonzales was a judge on the Supreme Court of Texas. So much for impartial justice.

Why do they dump these things. Do they really believe that we aren't going to connect the dots?

Of course not. Sometime a couple of weeks ago the decision was made that Justice and in particular Gonzales was going to take the fall for this.

It is a carefully orchestrated effort to shield Bush, Rove and the Whitehouse.

Anyway, can someone answer Catherine Martin's question for me?

Bwa! See, this is what I'm talking about. Who is this Catherine Martin idiot who thinks Washington, Michigan and Nevada could be on the southern border? With this level of talent, she should have been tapped for the CPA.

Whoops, looks like I owe Ms. Martin an apology. The "which ones are they?" question preceded Scolinos casting about for rationales for dismissal. Sorry, Cathy! I'm sure everything else you did was aboveboard, too!

flak - works perfectly well in the context of Kevin's post. Fragments from exploding shells.

Remember Tom Wolfe's 'Mau-Mauing the Flak-catchers'?

It's hardly surprising that the bureaucracy would defend its own against complaints from an elected representative like Issa. But for Issa it was a campaign issue: he had promised aggressive immigration reform, had won the election, and he felt like the bureaucracy was unresponsive to his demands. Anyway, how did that early July meeting turn out?

Two more camapigns where immigration was an issue was the early summer contest between Brian Bilbray and Francine Busby to replace Cunningham, and then the Nov 2006 regular congressional election between the same candidates. San Diego area Republicans have been insistent on enforcing the immigration laws. It is an issue in every San Diego area election. Even with a large Hispanic population (and even with Busby encouraging illegal aliens to get active in the campaign) the pro-enforcement side usually wins (e.g., Issa, Bilbray.) Even legal immigrants vote for strong enforcement of the immigration laws.

This is another story where lots of original reporting is being done by the guys in pajamas.

I am wondering. Have a lot of people here written lots of memos? Were they all perfectly worded, or even well worded?

A few more questions. Lam got the Cunningham conviction and an indictment against Foggo. Is there any evidence that justice was actually obstructed? The investigation against Rep Lewis is ongoing, is it not, with practically the same staff as was investigating it before? Can we expect the Democrats to start demanding progress on the Jefferson investigation, or is this strictly a partisan affaire?

Patrick Leahy is about as good a guy as Daryl Issa, as far as I know, but he is also a very spirited partisan.

Who did replace Lam, and what has happened to her case load, anybody know? Presumably, the replacement has taken up more illegal immigration cases.

Ah, Kevin.

Clinton fired all the attorneys during his term in office. I don't remember hearing any upraor over this back then.

THese people are political appts. To the victor goes the spoils, ever hear that, Kevin? The President should be able to fire ANYONE he wants. Bottomline.

This great scanadal was supposed to be all about partisan political interference with the justice system, yet even after the release of thousands of the most detailed emails, you don't have shit, do you?

...ratchet down the venom comming from Issa.

Here in California, we are well acquainted with Issa's venom. He pretty much bankrolled the recall of Gray Davis, largely in a fit of pique.

Wow. A troll swarm.

And not a meaningful thing to say between 'em.

tick, tick, tick, tick,....
The. Worst. President. Ever.

Shortstop, damn, you're right. Well I am glad in a way to know that our government can figure out which states are on the southern border.

Don't know why I assumed they couldn't, must've been my early morning BDS peak.

Al,Egbert,Hawkie do you guys ever come up with anything that's not so predictable?Banana republicans.

I'm glad that the people in the administration apparently never heard the rule that you shouldn't put anything in email that you would be uncomfortable reading on the front page of the New York Times. (It holds true if your employer might ever get sued, and it's doubly true if your email address ends in .gov.)

Shortstop, Jerry,

You need to read the email, as Kevin said, from the bottom up.

The person who replaced Lam is Karen P. Hewitt. Don't know her background.

Wasn't Gonzales excuse that "people in my department were doing it. I had no idea what was going on" lame from the second it came out of his mouth? It was his chief of staff, Sampson, whose fingerprints were all over this from the start. Now I could be getting my organizational duties mixed up here, but isn't the role of a chief of staff to make sure you look good? I could maybe buy it if it was some deputy AG running the firings, but not the head of his own office.

All of the names, except Lam, where members of the Native American Issues Subcommittee (NAIS). Chiara was the Chiar. A year earlier Heffelfinger was the Chair...but he left his USA MN position in Feb. 2006.

American Hawk,

The issue is not whether Bush (or Gonzales) had the right to fire attorneys. The issue is whether Bush is using US attorneys as a weapon for persecuting political opponents and protecting political allies. The firings are only relevant to the extent that they are evidence of this kind of corruption.

Has anyone you know of tried writing to that email address, and others mentioned in this scandal? (I haven't - maybe?) Where can I find stories from people who have sent email to "story-revealed" email addresses?

Only an American Hack would write, "He also can invade any country he wants." - The US Constitution gives the power to wage war to the Congress. It also gives it lots of power to manage the armed forces, which means the Iraq resolutions setting guidelines for troop readiness etc. are fully legitimate:

"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

...

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
..."

I am surprised that the trolls have not yet pointed out that the firing was actually very good for Carol Lam, who has immediately soft landed as the VP of Legal Affairs in the local wirless giant, Qualcomm.

So Bostruction is cool, so long as the person in the cross-hairs lands in a lucrative private sector gig?

Somehow I'm just not buying that.

Neil B,

I know it's hard to tell the difference, but that post by American Hawk was a parody.

Look. It's simple. These are political appointees. We can make up any reason at all to fire them because WE DON"T NEED A REASON. We can tell you whatever we want because it's none of your business. "Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies."

American Hawk: "Shorter Kevin Drum: I will bitch endlessly about dedicated public servants like Bush and Cheney, but will defend to the death attorneys fired for incompetence."

You're walking on very thin ice here, buddy.

Before you continue to engage in character assassination of several U.S. attorneys -- in the face of any and all contrary evidence presented tou you demonstrating otherwise -- I would suggest that you familiarize yourself with the definition of the term libel, to wit:

Libel: The act of knowingly and intentionally writing or publishing anything that is defamatory or that maliciously or damagingly misrepresents.

Tapes and missing segments of tapes brought down Nixon; email and missing emails will bring down the administration, regardless of whether Bush himself used email.

Email...hmmm--here's how the incredibly inarticulate and Nixonesque Bush attempted to explain why he did not use email:

"I tend not to e-mail - not only tend not to e-mail, I don't e-mail, uh, because of, uh, the different record requests that could happen to a president. I don't want to receive e-mails, 'cause, you know, there's no telling what somebody would e-mail me and it would show up as, uh, you know, part of some kind of a story that - and I wouldn't be able to say, 'Well, I didn't read the e-mail' - 'But I sent it your address; how can you say you didn't?' So, in other words, I'm very cautious about e-mailing."

Libel: The act of knowingly and intentionally writing or publishing anything that is defamatory or that maliciously or damagingly misrepresents.

The "knowingly" part lets Hawk off the hook.

"White House, vote theft, and the email trail
GWB43 is the name of an internet server owned by the Republican National Committee.

Oddly enough, communications revealed in the course of the Great U.S. Attorney Purge document dump reveal that key figures within the administration used such email addresses as SJennings@gwb43.com.

The White House has its own internal email system, ending in the .gov suffix, as mandated by the Presidential Records Act. As Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) notes:

CREW has learned that to fulfill its statutory obligations under the PRA, the White House email system automatically copies all messages created by staff and sends them to the White House Office of Records Management for archiving. It appears that the White House deliberately bypassed the automatic archiving function of its own email system that was designed to ensure compliance with the PRA."
found on cannonfire.blogspot

Dave Howard: You need to read the email, as Kevin said, from the bottom up.

Right. I'd already corrected myself, as had jerry, well before you posted this. Read the thread from the top all the way down.

Lotta trolls on this one. Kevin must be onto something.

gregor: I am surprised that the trolls have not yet pointed out that the firing was actually very good for Carol Lam, who has immediately soft landed as the VP of Legal Affairs in the local wirless giant, Qualcomm.

That just shows that large companies are willingly complicit in the administration's plot. It also draws attention to the fact that the attorneys were way too competent to be fired.

Shortstop (and Jerry): Apologies. I thought I had read it all the way, but obviously I skimmed too fast.

Dave

No big deal, Dave--thanks.

at slate.com:

"Meanwhile, the New York Times gives us a new reason to care about whether Gonzales stays or goes: Apparently, he's the one stopping the closure of Guantanamo Bay, a move Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice reportedly support.
According to the Times, Gates wants to transfer the hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo to U.S. soil. Gonzales wants to leave them where they are.
"Let's see what happens to Gonzales," said an unnamed senior administration official who still hopes to see the base shut down. Yes, let's see."

Oh, surely the Dark Lord is also refusing to consider a Guantanamo shutdown? Hard to believe it's only Abu holding out on that one.

This is a good one, from Hart Seely: Oath for Karl Rove

1.Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, but not necessarily the whole truth, maintaining an overall average of at least 70 percent truth, subject to later verification by an independent panel, so help you God?

2. Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, but in ways that are carefully cloaked in metaphor and allegory, so they require lengthy interpretation, in a Zen sort of way, so help you Buddha?

3. Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, unless in your opinion we are not worthy of it, in which case you shout like Jack Nicholson in that movie, "The truth? You can't handle the truth!" so help us all?

4. Do you solemnly swear to answer all questions in a semitruthful fashion and not claim things that are totally ridiculous, such as that George Bush actually reads a book every week, so that we all don't have to sit here and feel embarrassed by what you're saying, so help you God?

5. Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, except for when you claim that you can't remember, in which case we promise not to press the issue and later bring forth Tim Russert to testify that you are nothing but a dirty liar?

6. Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, with the understanding that—hey, who are we kidding here?

7. Do you solemnly swear to tell lies, damned lies, and nothing but lies, and thus we will have cleverly lured you into our trap, because then, by reversing your answers, we will figure out what the hell is going on, so help you God?

8. Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, unless you have an answer that makes for a really cool sound bite, in which case we all understand, because we've been there?

9. Do you solemnly swear to tell us something, anything, whether it's true or not, so that we can cut to the chase and get rid of Alberto Gonzales?
Bwahahahahahahahahahaha

If this isn't a smoking gun, it's at least the administration's "If I Did It" book.

I can't find the source of this--I had it on a word document yesterday. It uses dubya's own words to make the point. It's pretty damn good.

Whether or not "the staff of a President operate[s] in [a real or imagined] constant fear of being hauled before various committees to discuss internal deliberations," the American people are ill-served by your Administration repeatedly misrepresenting the truth of the matter asserted. Moreover, your staff's internal memos and emails already implicate your entire Administration in wrongdoing, impermissible tampering with the DOJ and unconstitutional conduct. So it is disingenuous to proffer hypotheticals as to how a formal investigation may have a "chilling effect" on the integrity of your staff's advice when said evidence is a direct indicia of fraud.

A fish has already been gaffed; the fish is now attempting to dictate terms as to how it will not allow itself to be filleted by the rule of law...

We've seen a LOT of emails by now and still no reason why these original six were chosen. At this point it's obvious that either a) the key messages are still being held back or b) the real reasons were bad enough that these folks (nearly all lawyers, after all) knew quite well not to put them down on paper.

LMAO,

Hack and egghead are grasping at straws now. Jeebus... Hack even tries to play the race card.

Smarter trolls please.

how many white house flacks are named Cathy Martin?
is this the same Cathy Martin in Cheney's "communications operation"... the one who testified in Libby trial?

bobb: "The 'knowingly' part lets Hawk off the hook."

Touche.

Actually, bobb, ignorance of established fact(s) is not a valid legal defense in a libel case -- provided that the plaintiff can prove that, prior to the date and / or time of the offense, the defendant ignored with prejudice any prima facie>/i> presentation of evidence that contradicts the offending statement(s) in question.

But I still like your answer better.

tries to play the race card.

Shameless blogwhoring alert at the end of a dead thread: I commented on that very thing this morning. the race card doesn't automatically fly.

Dead thread so what the heck:

Thanks for the link GC (as I prefer to think of you). I, as a general rule, don't click on people's name links (I will do a r.o. sometimes).

Starting with a disclaimer, catches my eye. The less thinking about motivations I have to do, the better.. and because of it you are now on my daily blogroll... though your stellar rep here didn't hurt ;)

Cheers!

The idea that Bush and Gonzales wanted the appointees to get tougher on illegal immigration is a nonstarter of hilarious proportions.

Bush's Grand Strategy has been:

Invade the World! Invite the World!

Thanks Simp. Your wife is a climate scientist. You should aks her to check my stoichiometry on the post where I figured out my governors CO2 output driving 6 Suburbans 280 miles a day one way (almost a ton).

Oops - 280 miles round trip. Sorry.

Ron Byers: Why do they dump these things. Do they really believe that we aren't going to connect the dots?

Cutting off a limb that has gangrene keeps the poison from spreading further....say, into the inner political sanctum of the White House where the Mayberry Machiavellis reign. First Libby, now... well, see a pattern? Gonzales serves at the pleasure of the president as some like to repeat... although I would say, preznit.

Kevin Drum >"...We still don't have any emails from before the purge explaining why DOJ wanted to fire these particular USAs. Surely there are some?..."

We haven`t seen them yet because they are still being created. Once they have finished polishing the group of emails to be consistant with their latest babbling points they will be released.

Any other clarifications needed ?

"...The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power..." - Henry Wallace

Hah! Look at that first email.

Given a list of six USA's and the states in which they work this Catherine Martin was unable to figure out which three are on the southern border!