1 Boring Old Man

House Panel Orders Subpoenas for Top Bush Aides

A House Judiciary subcommittee today authorized subpoenas for Karl Rove, President Bush’s political adviser, and other senior White House officials in the investigation into the firing of eight United States attorneys.

Democrats said the subpoenas, approved on a voice vote of the panel, would not be issued immediately but could provide leverage for Congress in trying to win the testimony of the aides being sought.

“We have worked toward voluntary cooperation on this investigation, but we must prepare for the possibility that the Justice Department and White House will continue to hide the truth,” said Representative Linda Sanchez of California, chairwoman of the subcommittee on commercial and administrative law.

If they’ve got nothing to hide, why are they hiding?

Let it begin…

There is a nineteen day gap in the DOJ emails. During one week of that time, President Bush was on an overseas trip. He was back in time for Thanksgiving on November 23rd, and he was likely back in the White House on Monday November 27th. In this period, the question about whether "the boss" needed to be bothered about this was resolved, and William Kelly, Deputy White House Counsel, was told by someone to give the "green light" to the Attorney firings – "We’re a go…".

• Where are those emails?
• What happened?
• Was the President consulted?
• Who said "go?"

Is there a time to fight, even if winning doesn’t look like it’s in the cards? In the classic paradigm described by the philosopher, Hegel, known as the Master Slave conflict, a bully stands in a field awaiting a challenger. When one appears, they begin to fight. There are only two outcomes. One of them is killed in a fight to the death. The winner takes the field, awaiting the next challenger. The second outcome is that one of them surrenders, and becomes the Slave. In this paradigm, the Slave is the ultimate winner. Valuing his life more than winning, the Slave learns that power is no way to be in the world and finds other, more civilized, ways to deal with people. The Master is doomed to a life of fighting, a hated conqueror who will sooner or later be toppled.

In this case, the case of a Democracy, we send our champions into the field by majority vote, and last November, we did just that.  We have a government dominated by people who rely only on power. Yet, they are, to a man, cowards – people who would not fight themselves, people who avoided the call in their own youth, not out of political conviction but out of fear. Yet they now send our own soldiers off to die in a war that shouldn’t have been fought and can’t be won. Our leaders don’t know when to lose, because they’re not doing the fighting. Their fight is here and they won’t engage. They’ve locked themselves inside their Castle, afraid to even walk onto the field of battle. They’re advocating that our children fight to the death in Iraq, but won’t even sit in a room with our elected officials.

So, it’s time for a siege. The King is sending his armies off to fight a war of conquest. People are dying. The Treasury is being depleted. And the King feasts in the Castle. If our soldiers are being asked to go to Iraq and fight out of loyalty to our country, then our Congress has an obligation to do the same thing, fight the fight we elected them to undertake, whether they think they can win it or not. If Mr. Rove and Ms. Miers won’t come out of the Castle, Storm to Castle. If Bush and Cheney won’t negotiate with the us through our elected officials, tear down the walls and drag them out.

There is a time to fight even if you might lose – and this is it. It’s our field…

It’s Time To Draw That Line

The issue of our times, indeed the issue for the modern Democratic Party is whether or not this group of Democratic leaders has the stomach to wage that fight even if they lose. It is not a partisan issue: legislative branch prerogatives hang in the balance here because the Congress will be eviscerated if this fight is not waged now. If the Democrats fail to force this issue now, their entire ability to oversee this administration and provide any kind of check and balance will evaporate. We will never find out what happened with the Cheney Energy Task Force; what happened with the prewar intelligence; what happened with the corruption and mismanagement of the occupation; and what happened on a host of issues where the American taxpayers deserve an accounting. But finally, failure to fight the Bush White House here would simply validate the Cheney approach to lie to Congress without consequence.

And yes, there is another issue here as well. Democrats have watched in horror these last six years as their party leaders inside the Beltway have shrunk from their obligations to their party and country to provide an effective opposition and alternative. We have lost a good deal of our Bill of Rights during this time right underneath the noses of the Congress, and our foreign policy is by decree. The Democratic leadership needs to demonstrate now that it is worthy of the support given to it by not only the party but also millions of independent voters last November.

Failure to say "enough" to this cabal now, even if it risks a loss in the courts down the road, will have severe political consequences. Independents will observe that there really is no difference between the parties after all, but worse, millions of Democrats may decide that the modern party itself has run its course and that it is time for another movement.

Why I Was Fired

By DAVID C. IGLESIAS

March 21, 2007

Albuquerque

WITH this week’s release of more than 3,000 Justice Department e-mail messages about the dismissal of eight federal prosecutors, it seems clear that politics played a role in the ousters.

Of course, as one of the eight, I’ve felt this way for some time. But now that the record is out there in black and white for the rest of the country to see, the argument that we were fired for “performance related” reasons (in the words of Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty) is starting to look more than a little wobbly.

United States attorneys have a long history of being insulated from politics. Although we receive our appointments through the political process (I am a Republican who was recommended by Senator Pete Domenici), we are expected to be apolitical once we are in office. I will never forget John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, telling me during the summer of 2001 that politics should play no role during my tenure. I took that message to heart. Little did I know that I could be fired for not being political.

…

Good has already come from this scandal. Yesterday, the Senate voted to overturn a 2006 provision in the Patriot Act that allows the attorney general to appoint indefinite interim United States attorneys. The attorney general’s chief of staff has resigned and been replaced by a respected career federal prosecutor, Chuck Rosenberg. The president and attorney general have admitted that “mistakes were made,” and Mr. Domenici and Ms. Wilson have publicly acknowledged calling me.

President Bush addressed this scandal yesterday. I appreciate his gratitude for my service — this marks the first time I have been thanked. But only a written retraction by the Justice Department setting the record straight regarding my performance would settle the issue for me.

David C. Iglesias was United States attorney for the District of New Mexico from October 2001 through last month.

Above all else, America is a nation of the people, by the people, for the people. Another Federal Prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, said, "Her name Valerie Wilson. She had a life before Joe Wilson, but to them she wasn’t Val Wilson, she wasn’t a person, she was an argument, she was a fact to use against Wilson." And David Inglesias is a person too. And as of today 3223 individual young American people and unmeasured numbers of Iraqi people have died in the Iraq War. Valerie Wilson, David Inglesias, and all of those dead soldiers are patriotic people.

Enough of this… 

Bush Warns Democrats to Accept Interviews

"I’m worried about precedents that would make it difficult for somebody to walk into the Oval Office and say, ‘Mr. President, here’s what’s on my mind,’ " Bush said. "And if you haul somebody up in front of Congress and put him in oath and, you know, all the klieg lights and all the questioning, to me it makes it very difficult for a president to get good advice."

So Congress is going to subpoena Karl Rove and Harriet Miers. If they refuse, put them in jail. We’ve really had quite enough from this Administration who seems to think that they were elected to the imperial throne. Truth be told, Bush really was. There’s absolutely no way he would be President if his father hadn’t already been elected and served. But the notion that they are going to defy a Congressional Subpoena is just not their right. I can’t defy a subpoena of any kind that I know of. Why should they be able to defy such an order? I think this is yet another episode in the grounds for impeachment. If this President is unwilling to be accountable to anyone, Congress, the Senate, the American people, then he deserves anything he gets. But the crowning moment is, "And if you haul somebody up in front of Congress and put him in oath and, you know, all the klieg lights and all the questioning, to me it makes it very difficult for a president to get good advice." For this President to argue that he gets "good advice" is the most ludicrous comment of all. He didn’t think the Iraq Study Group gave him good advice. He didn’t like what the C.I.A. said about Iraq. I doubt that he’d know "good advice" if it bit him on the ass. And, as long as we’re on this point, exactly what "advice" did Harriet Miers and Karl Rove give him about the firing of the U.S. Attorneys? I thought Bush wasn’t involved…

or something like that…

^{Bush pointing out his higher powers [next post up]}

The firing of the U.S. Attorneys is a confusing issue to me. The emails that I’ve looked through so far in the "dump" are all centered on Immigration Cases, but I suspect that it’s not Immigration that’s at the center of the story – it’s more likely prosecutors who either wouldn’t play ball with other Administration agendae or were dangerous to Republicans. That will emerge in time. But one thing is clear, there was almost no distinction between legitimate Judicial function and partisan political actions. Their firing was political, and much of the email correspondance was about how to cover over the political part.

Harriet Miers, was hardly on the radar until Bush nominated her for the Supreme Court. She was locally famous in Texas where she was the "first woman this-and-that." Twenty years ago, she met George W. Bush, and has been with him in some capacity ever since. Her Supreme Court nomination was typical for Bush, an insider. In her interviews with Congressional leaders, she basically flunked. At least she had the good sense to know it and withdrew, returning to her position as White House Counsel. She resigned on January 4, 2007 with no credible explanation.

As the U.S. Attorney firing question has moved to the front burner, we’ve learned that Harriet Miers is in the center of things. Here’s a small piece, in the lead up to the firings:

"Who will determine whether this requires the President’s attention?" At issue, who, indeed, will decide if  "this will be determined to require the boss’s attention?" In Sampson’s email, we probably find the answer – "Karl’s Shop." Sampson anticipated political upheaval but on November 15th when he was wriring this, it’s clear that he was used to a Republican dominated Washington. In fact, most of their planning for these firings happened before the mid-term elections.

I suspect that Harriet’s abrupt resignation has something to do with her central role in this story – a preemptive casualty. I expect that the real broker here was Mr. Karl Rove, and that "Karl’s Shop" is where the Bush Administration’s pulse is located. We look forward to learning a lot more about "Karl’s Shop" ["another pre-execution necessity"] in the coming days. And as long as we’re musing, who gave the "green light?" The next emails in the set [December 4th] come after said "green light" has obviously already been given. Do you suppose there are a few missing emails? And it might be interesting also to find out if it was "determined" that the "boss" needed to be consulted, and if so, what he had to say. And if it was not "determined" to involve the "boss," who did the determining?…

I feel sorry for Gonzales, and maybe Harriet Miers too. They’re the kind of people that Bush surrounded himself with. People he’s used – picked for loyalty or gratitude rather than for talent or vision. I don’t feel that for Bolton, or Rumsfeld, or Libby. Powell – I just feel disappointment – big disappointment. I think I’m disappointed in Rice too. She seems like a smart lady. But in some ways, she’s been the biggest outright liar of all – and with her, it shows.

So it’s down to Rice, Rove, Bush, and Cheney. The Libby Trial all but destroyed Cheney. He may beat the rap, and continue to snarl. Sure, he remains a mighty dangerous piece of the equation so long as he’s anywhere near power. But he’ll never really command the respect of anyone, not even from his supporters. His dirty linen shows too much, and there’s plenty more where that came from if he tries to stay on the front burner.

I hope whether Gonzales resigns, gets fired, or stays impotently that the Senate won’t drop the inquiry into the firing of the lawyers. Rove’s in waist deep and they ought to go after him – not just because we want them to, but because this kind of partisan manipulation of the judiciary is not acceptible. 

But I still hold out for impeachment of both Bush and Cheney. The pre-war manipulation of intelligence is a "high crime" by any definition. Whether they have the votes or not, I think the Congress owes it to us to investigate every piece of it. If the Republican Congressmen choose not to see the truth, I see that as their perogative. But we need the facts on the table in front of us. The American people chose Mr. Bush, but we didn’t know what we were choosing. We need to see it out in front of us in black and white.

In the history books, these might well be known as the "shadow years," but I sure hope the chapter ends with the lights coming on and shining brightly. It’s just too huge to sweep under the rug. Too many dead, too much thrown away…