1 Boring Old Man

And speaking of Talking Points, this weeks attacks’ on Nancy Pelosi are classics. The centerpiece was Cheney’s appearance on spin-network with Russ Limbaugh. He chides Ms. Pelosi for bad behavior with the music in the background being something like sleeping with the enemy.

I’m going to skip the trap of defending Pelosi. There’s nothing to defend really. But that’s the trap set with the Talking Points. Sort of a Hanoi Jane style attack [there’s a video on youtobe that refers to her as Hezbollah Pelosi – but it doesn’t just roll off the tongue]. Cheney’s attack was that Pelosi’s trip was bad behavior. My question to the Vice President is, "Who are you to talk about bad behavior?" The Office of the Vice President has just been indicted and convicted of very bad behavior, and the trial itself revealed even more bad behavior. And how about the prewar intelligence scam as some bad behavior? or the 2001 energy conference as bad behavior?

When the history books get written, there’s going to be a whole long chapter about Dick Cheney’s bad behavior. Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Syria, if mentioned at all, will be given as an example of Congress having to pick up the ball because the Executive Branch of government is dysfunctional [and paranoid]…

White House unofficial e-mail accounts draw scrutiny

The White House is being accused of improperly trying to hide e-mails about government business by using unofficial e-mail accounts.

Congressional investigators say they found communications on one account from top White House aides about official matters, like the December firings of eight U.S. attorneys.

Those e-mails were discovered on a Republican National Committee e-mail domain called gwb43.com. That domain is not part of the official White House communication system.

The Presidential Records Act, passed during the Nixon administration, requires the preservation of all official records of and about the president.

A White House spokesman defended the use of outside e-mail accounts as an appropriate method of separating official business from political campaign work.

But the use of those accounts by officials discussing the firings — and one from now-imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff — have led a liberal watchdog group to accuse administration of trying to skirt the law governing preservation of presidential records.

"They wanted to make sure that no record could ever be found of what they were really up to in the White House," Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told CNN.

Rep. Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has sent letters to the RNC and the former head of the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, arguing that outside e-mails are subject to the act.

In March, Waxman notified those groups that congressional investigators "have uncovered evidence that White House staff have used non-governmental e-mail accounts to conduct official government business," and called on them to preserve those records.

White House political advisers used the outside e-mails to discuss the December firings of federal prosecutors in eight cities, a shake-up that has led to a firestorm on Capitol Hill, documents released amid the flap have shown.

Waxman’s committee released another chain of e-mails it said illustrated the type of exchange taking place on the account. The e-mails began with a February 2003 message from Abramoff to Susan Ralston, the former executive assistant to President Bush’s top political adviser, Karl Rove.

In the chain, Abramoff advised Ralston that an upcoming Interior Department gaming compact with a Louisiana Indian tribe would be "an anathema to our supporters down there."

When an associate notified him that his e-mail had been forwarded to another White House aide, Abramoff replied, "Dammit. It was sent to Susan on her RNC pager and was not supposed to go into the WH (White House) system."

So will we get the email today? or  have they been destroyed? or will the White House continue to feign concern for the personal privacy of its staffers. I like the fluidity of their logic. Private citizens are fair game – like NSA and FBI looking into our email and phone conversations. But staffers – see, that’s different. The only thing different is who is served – at least that’s the only apparent difference. Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame Wilson wouldn’t see it as different, I don’t think.

In my post below about Froomkin’s article, I compared this email thing to Alexander Butterfield’s revelation that Nixon had taped his life in the White House. I doubt that Bush has tapes, or that they would be particularly interesting. But the working emails between Karl Rove and almost anyone would be of great interest. This Administration has been very effective at keeping their sheenanigans out of the public eye until recently. For six years, things just happen, but they can’t bring off the kind of almost constantly reactive smear campaign they’ve been running without having some kind of way of communicating.

It brings up a major point. Why is there an Internet in the first place? It’s the same reason there are Interstate Highways – National Defense. Eisenhower tasked the people who put our first satellite up [ARPA] to set up a communication system that could not be shut down [ARPA-net]. It’s what we call the Internet now. When Al Gore said that we needed an "information highway," people in the know just laughed and said "another one?" So the rest of us got on board.

It’s such a good system that it’s inconceivable that Rove et al haven’t used it to coordinate their consolidation of power. Access to their communication system, in particular, Rove’s communication system, would open the door in two ways. First it would tell us what they’ve really done. Second, it would shut them down. Right this minute, Alberto Gonzales is sweating blood because he can’t coordinate his story with his associates. Cut off this Administration’s ability for private communications and the house of cards falls.

So, even more than the communications about the U.S. Attorney firings, I want access to the "Talking Point Network" – whatever system they’ve used to get these coordinated smears going almost instantaneously. The American people have been duped by the public persona of this Administration. Like with the White House tapes, it won’t take too many emails from behind the scenes to put the needed pin in the baloon.

The Next Bush Scandal?

The slowly-unfolding disclosure that some White House aides use non-government e-mail servers to conduct official business may soon be reaching scandal proportions.

As John D. McKinnon writes in today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required): "The widespread use of private email accounts by some top White House officials is sparking a congressional probe into the practice and whether it violates a post-Nixon law requiring that White House deliberations be documented.

"A top Democratic lawmaker says outside email accounts were used in an attempt to avoid scrutiny; the White House says their purpose was to avoid using government resources for political activities, although they were used to discuss the firing of U.S. attorneys."

Most of the e-mail accounts at issue are on Republican National Committee servers. For instance: "Susan Ralston, until recently presidential adviser Karl Rove’s assistant at the White House, appears to have used at least four outside email accounts: a ‘gwb’ domain account, a ‘georgewbush.com’ account, and an ‘rnchq.org’ account – all run by the RNC – plus an AOL account. She once emailed two associates of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, ‘I now have an RNC blackberry which you can use to e-mail me at any time. No security issues like my WH email.’ …

"’At the end of the day, it looks like they were trying to avoid the records act… by operating official business off the official systems,’ said John Podesta, who worked in the White House for the entire Clinton presidency, including a stint as chief of staff…

"White House officials dispute the criticisms, saying the purpose of the RNC accounts has been to avoid running afoul of another federal law, the Hatch Act. It prohibits many federal officials from engaging in political activity on government time or with government resources."

Will these e-mails ever see the light of day? McKinnon writes: "The White House and RNC said the RNC is preserving the emails generated by White House officials on the RNC’s computers, and that they are exempt from the RNC’s normal policy of erasing emails after 30 days."

It was a Friday afternoon in July, and the witness was just a small fry: Alexander Butterfield, who kept President Nixon’s schedule and handled his paper flow. Three staff members of the Senate Watergate Committee were questioning him, preparing for his public testimony the following Monday.

Trolling, one asked whether there might be something down at the White House, some sort of recording system?

 Butterfield took a breath.

"I was hoping you fellows wouldn’t ask me that," he said.

And with that, history turned a corner. What Butterfield revealed that afternoon in 1973 — and on television to the senators and the world three days later – was electrifying news: For 2 ½ years, Nixon had been secretly taping his conversations.

Fight over fired prosecutors heats up

Responding, Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse stopped short of saying the department would fight the subpoena. But he said legal concerns about violating privacy rights of people mentioned in the documents have kept the Justice Department from releasing them.

"Much of the information that the Congress seeks pertains to individuals other than the U.S. attorneys who resigned," Roehrkasse said. "Because there are individuals’ privacy interests implicated by publicly releasing this information, it is unfortunate that Congress would choose this option."

I don’t think those of us growing up in the post-World War II era were experientially aware of the political climate that antedated that war. The decline of the ancient monarchies that lead up to World War I left a vacuum that was filled by a three-way struggle – Democracy, Fascism, and Communism. Hitler was so insane that his Nazi regime obscured the forces that favored Fascism. Stalin was similarly the kind of tyrant that allowed us to domonize Communism. So, in the post-War period, we had a traumatic memory of both Fascism and Communism, and were mystified that any sensible group of people might allow such forms of government to survive. These political movements had become personified.

So the question, "Is the inevitable fate of Fascist or Communist governments defined by what happened in Germany and Russia?" or "Was what happened in Germany and Russia a function of the particular rulers who came to power?" remains unclear. Both of these seemingly dichotomous examples resulted in the same thing – a concentration of power in the hands of a power elite that came to no good end.

Our lives, lived in the latter half of the Twentieth  Century, have been dominated by a two way dichotomy [Communism versus Democracy] rather than by a three-way struggle. And there was something of a necessary concentration of power in this country necessitated by the over-riding danger we called "The Cold War."

But the fundamental conflict between Socialism [Communism] and Capitalism [Fascism] has continued in the attenuated version Liberalism versus Conservativism throughout the second half of the Twentieth Century. Both sides of this political spectrum are sure they are right, but have been kept in check by the ebb and flow of our system of checks and balances. But, with the end of the "Cold War," we find ourselves in a fine pickle. Lawrence Britt described the characteristics of Fascist governments [Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Chile, and Indonesia]:

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism
2. Disdain for the importance of human rights
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause
4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism
5. Rampant sexism
6. A controlled mass media
7. Obsession with national security
8. Religion and ruling elite tied together
9. Power of corporations protected
10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated
11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts
12. Obsession with crime and punishment
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption
14. Fraudulent elections

I don’t personally think that what’s happened with Bush is part of the ebb and flow for one simple reason – they aren’t playing by the rules. The Justice Department Affair makes it crystal clear that this Administration is attempting to fundamentally alter the voting process that is the lynchpin of our Democracy. From one point of view, I suppose that the power elite is always at a disadvantage in a Democracy. By definition, they are never likely to be the majority. They’re always in the position of having to find a way to gather supporters from the less well-placed. This time, they did it by engaging the Christian Right.  In the past, it was the fear of Communism. But that’s as it should be. The powerful, after all, have more "power." But with Bush and Cheney, they’ve way overstepped their bounds, by design, by trickery. This is not a crisis between Liberalism and Conservativism, this is a fight against Fascism – and it feels like a fight to the death.

In my opinion, the fate of both Nazi Germany and  Communist Russia was not just a function of the particular leaders. It was the fate of any utopian form of government. Human beings are similar to "herd animals," but only similar. It is our destiny to fight the battle between collective and individual forces until the end of time, but never resolve it.

The Rachel Pulose story smells like 3 day old fish. She’s the U.S. Attorney for Minnesota that was appointed in February 2006 [the one with the "Coronation"] to replace Thomas Heffelfinger who resigned abruptly. While Heffelfinger denies that he was "pushed out" of his job, there are some damning facts in the story.

First, there’s the post by  Phoenix Woman on Firedoglake. Heffelfinger says he abruptly resigned for financial reasons. Yet, Phoenix Woman found out what he said about his DOJ job: "it is the world’s best job.  There’s no doubt about it, it is just a great job.  There isn’t a day here that I don’t pinch myself and say how lucky I am to get to do it twice." And then, he was out of work for three months after he resigned, before he returned to his old firm. Doesn’t sound right.

Then there’s Rachel’s story [from the Minnesota Campaign Report]. She was at  the Minnesota firm, Dorsey and Whitney, until December, 2006. Dorsey and Whitney represented Minnesota-based UnitedHealth, the largest U.S. health insurer. In December, William McGuire stepped down as the C.E.O. of UnitedHealth because there was an SEC allegation that they backdated a stock option in a $330 million deal. He was being investigated by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota. So back to Rachel Paulose. She went to the DOJ in January 2006 to work in Assistant Attorney General McNulty’s office. In February 2006, she’s appointed to fill Heffelfinger’s post when he suddenly resigns and Paulose becomes the U.S. Attorney for Minnesota. So in a month or two, she goes from a firm representing McGuire and UnitedHealth, to being in charge of the office investigating him! Also, doesn’t sound right [great blogger reporting here]. Oh yeah, her resume’s been misreported maybe to cover the bad smell here.

I’ve been wondering what all of this is about. It sounds like a Rove/Plamesque ploy. Good for Josh Marshall at TPM for chasing it down.

Sooner or later, the “dirty trick” du jour is going to be exposed to the light of day. It’s just inconceivable that Pelosi would make up such a thing. But this kind of “dirty trick” has worked well in the past. They get the story out, hammer it, then disappear before it can be refuted. I hope Pelosi laughs it off and calls the Israeli Prime Minister instead of getting into a public pissing contest like Kerry did with the Swiftboaters.

Congress girds up for return to oversight
Probes include alleged contracting abuses in Iraq and the alteration of scientific findings.

>Not since the Depression-era Congress of 1932 has Capitol Hill ramped up so quickly for oversight hearings and related legislation – most targeting the Bush administration.

Both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue are hiring more lawyers, and watchdog groups say they are swamped with calls from committee staff asking for advice on pursuing the nearly lost art of congressional investigation.

In its first 100 days, the new Congress launched probes on allegations ranging from contracting abuses in Iraq and the alteration of scientific findings to the misuse of federal resources for partisan purposes. Some hearings, such as those on last year’s firing of eight US attorneys, were snatched from the headlines; others are longer-term campaigns to try to uncover any government waste and to expand the public’s access to how government conducts its business.

"There’s a whole culture of effective oversight, which the Congress carried out in the 1970s up through the early 1990s, that has been very much lost, and there’s a lot of effort now going on to rebuild oversight skills," says Charles Tiefer, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law and a former deputy House counsel.

I’m tired of just going after them for bad judgement, or idelogical decisions, or just general slime. I’m ready for criminal prosecution. The biggest is Niger. That was a known, conscious lie. The Office of Special Plans – Feith leaked a top secret memo on purpose to William Kristol’s Weekly Standard. And the Justice Department, how many laws can one small group break in a short time?

We owe it to our children and their children to make sure this never happens again. This is not a gallery to be proud of. We let it slide after Nixon, and look where it’s crept back to, little by little.

This is not about "the Democrats are in power, let’s get the Republicans." It’s not even about the Liberals now get to redo some of what the Conservatives have undone of what the Liberals did last time. That would be business as usual. This is about a criminal attempt to fundamentally alter our government to fit an ideology held by precious few – a secret ideology. This is about publicly saying one thing, and privately doing another. It’s about people who we commonly call "crooks" – crooks that have taken over the very Agencies we have to deal with "crooks." So there’s nothing about what’s happening now that’s in the realm of the normal ebb and flow of American politics.

These people think they are "special." And they are very, very "special." Let’s give them all the attention they deserve…

Scandal puts spotlight on Christian law school

"It used to be that high-level DOJ jobs were generally reserved for the best of the legal profession," wrote a contributor to The New Republic website . "That a recent graduate of one of the very worst [and sketchiest] law schools with virtually no relevant experience could ascend to this position is a sure sign that there is something seriously wrong at the DOJ."

The Regent law school was founded in 1986, when Oral Roberts University shut down its ailing law school and sent its library to Robertson’s Bible-based college in Virginia. It was initially called "CBN University School of Law" after the televangelist’s Christian Broadcasting Network, whose studios share the campus and which provided much of the funding for the law school. (The Coors Foundation is also a donor to the university.) The American Bar Association accredited Regent ‘s law school in 1996.

Not long ago, it was rare for Regent graduates to join the federal government. But in 2001, the Bush administration picked the dean of Regent’s government school, Kay Coles James, to be the director of the Office of Personnel Management — essentially the head of human resources for the executive branch. The doors of opportunity for government jobs were thrown open to Regent alumni.

"We’ve had great placement," said Jay Sekulow , who heads a non profit law firm based at Regent that files lawsuits aimed at lowering barriers between church and state. "We’ve had a lot of people in key positions."

Many of those who have Regent law degrees, including Goodling, joined the Department of Justice. Their path to employment was further eased in late 2002, when John Ashcroft , then attorney general, changed longstanding rules for hiring lawyers to fill vacancies in the career ranks.

Previously, veteran civil servants screened applicants and recommended whom to hire, usually picking top students from elite schools.

In a recent Regent law school newsletter, a 2004 graduate described being interviewed for a job as a trial attorney at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in October 2003. Asked to name the Supreme Court decision from the past 20 years with which he most disagreed, he cited Lawrence v. Texas, the ruling striking down a law against sodomy because it violated gay people’s civil rights.

"When one of the interviewers agreed and said that decision in Lawrence was ‘maddening,’ I knew I correctly answered the question," wrote the Regent graduate . The administration hired him for the Civil Rights Division’s housing section — the only employment offer he received after graduation, he said.

As each day goes by, the stories just get worse and worse. It’s staggering. It’s not that there’s something so terribly wrong with this:

But in 2001, the Bush administration picked the dean of Regent’s government school, Kay Coles James, to be the director of the Office of Personnel Management — essentially the head of human resources for the executive branch.

The doors of opportunity for government jobs were thrown open to Regent alumni.

Every state has a bar association that licenses attorneys to practice in that state. For some reason, the Virginia State Bar refused to release the list of the state’s licensed attorneys. Virginia law clearly states states that this list is public information and must be released [read more]. After five months of stonewalling, Mary Yancey Spencer of the Bar forked it over on 10 September 2003.