1 Boring Old Man

• I live in the mountains of north Georgia. While not born here, I am a Southerner, and have lived my adult life in the State of Georgia by choice. I’m what one might call a proud Southerner. While I’m anything but a representative of the prevailing politics here, that’s not why I’m saying this. In the Waxman Hearings today, Representative Westmoreland from Noonan, Georgia was as intense an embarassment to this State and part of the country as I’ve ever felt. If the people of Noonan insist on electing a Republican, that’s their right. I don’t live there and have nothing to say about their reason for electing whomever they want to elect. But I’d appreciate it if they would elect someone who is able to present himself at least as well as the dogs on hee-haw or the Deputy in The Dukes of Hazzard. I want to apologize for Georgia for sending Mr. Westmoreland to Washington. Every place needs minimum standards. He doesn’t rise to those standards.
• I liked Henry Waxman. He’s obviously on my wavelength, but he handled himself extremely well. And I would like for the Representative from New Hampshire, Mr. Hodes, to consider a run for the Presidency – sometime soon.
• I know why Patrick Fitzgerald declined to testify and I respect his decision, but boy would I love to put him up against Representative Tom Davis, who might as well be considered the lawyer for the Bush Administration [He’s the one that referred to Mr. Patrick Fitzgerald as "Fitzpatrick"]. Fitz would have taken him apart like a freshly plucked fryer getting ready for the pan.
• But my main reaction to the hearings surprised me. Two career Civil Servants in charge of security testified. They struck me as solid citizens. They had never been asked, nor had they felt called on to investigate the C.I.A. Leak. No action of any kind had ever been initiated in response to this case. I found myself sitting in my living room with tears rolling down my cheeks. I didn’t expect that.

• Dr. James Knodell, Director, Office of Security, The White House
• Mr. Bill Leonard, Director, Information Security Oversight Office, National Archives and Records Administration

Watching CSPAN of Waxman’s hearing, there’s such partisanship from the Congressional Panel members that it’s hard to follow the deliberations. Representative Tom Davis is the attorney for the Administration. But there’s one clearly absurd point. Dr. Knodell argued that there was no Administrative Investigation of the C.I.A. Leaks because there was a Criminal Investigation underway by the Justice Depoartment. This point isn’t partisan, it’s factual. The point of an Administrative Investigation is to plug the leak and prevent future leaks. It has nothing to do with criminality. This makes absolutely no sense. The fact of a criminal investigation addresses something in the past. The Administrative responsibility of these two men addresses not only the past, but the present, and the future. To suspend the Administrative Investigation because there is a Criminal Investigation is way backwards, totally uspide down. Find the source and plug it trumps punish the criminal 100% of the time.

And as for Victoria Toensing [February 18, 2007]:

Trial in Error

Plame was not covert. She worked at CIA headquarters and had not been stationed abroad within five years of the date of Novak’s column.

Memo to Gonzales

Arrogance has been the most consistent hallmark of George W. Bush’s presidency. His administration’s simple philosophy of government has been consistent: We can do any damn thing we want.

We can invade Iraq. We can blow off the Geneva Conventions. We can listen to your private phone calls, Mr. and Ms. America, and we can read your private e-mails, too. We can arrest anybody we want and hold them as long as we want, and we don’t even have to tell them why, much less file formal charges or hold a trial. We can even defy the laws of science — or at least ignore the ones that annoy us, such as that whole "greenhouse effect" thing. We can use the troops for photo ops when they come back from war grievously wounded and then basically forget about them.

And we don’t have to explain ourselves, either. The nerve of anyone to even ask us. Don’t you people understand that asking impertinent questions of the White House is exactly what Osama bin Laden wants you to do?

Email shows Rove’s role in ouster of prosecutors

In an email with the subject-line, "Question from Karl Rove," an assistant counsel at the White House wrote to Justice noting that Rove had "stopped by and asked how you plan to proceed," according to Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman. The email makes no mention of Rove expressing any opinion, Fratto said Thursday, but rather notes that Rove had asked, on Jan. 6, "What is the plan for attorneys, what do you guys plan to do?… Are you guys talking about all of them, or are you talking about doing something else?"

Kyle Sampson, then chief of staff at the Justice Department, responded to an email, including that information and forwarded to him by David Leitch, an assistant counsel at the White House, by discussing the ramifications of the dismissals.

"Judge and I discussed (this) briefly a couple weeks ago," Sampson replied, in an email obtained Thursday by the Tribune, with a reference to Gonzales, a former Texas judge. He then went on to discuss the legal and historical customs for how long U.S. Attorneys serve and when and how they are replaced.

"As an operational matter, we would like to replace 15-20 percent of the current U.S. Attorneys—the underperforming ones," Sampson wrote in this email to the White House aide. "The vast majority of U.S. Attorneys, 80-85 percent, I would guess, are doing a great job, are loyal Bushies, etc."

"This e-mail does not contradict anything we have said," Fratto said in describing the e-mail about Rove, which the White House has not publicly released. "Not only is there no characterization of what the judge thinks of it" in the e-mail exchange, he said, "there is no characterization of what Karl thinks of it."

And didn’t Bush say yesterday, "I’ve heard those allegations about political decision making — it’s just not true."? And didn’t we read today that Samson said, "As an operational matter, we would like to replace 15-20 percent of the current U.S. Attorneys—the underperforming ones. The vast majority of U.S. Attorneys, 80-85 percent, I would guess, are doing a great job, are loyal Bushies, etc."?

I guess it comes down to what Rove meant by ‘it’s done’? and what Samson meant by ‘loyal Bushies’? I suppose we’ll hear Fratto or Snow explain that to us tomorrow. Frankly, I’d like to see the Congressional Investigation widened to include the "80-85 per cent" of "loyal Bushies." They’re the ones we really need to worry about…

Fitzgerald Turns Down Waxman

After the verdict, Representative Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the government reform committee, wrote to Fitzgerald and asked the prosecutor to talk to him and Representative Tom Davis, the senior Republican on the committee, about meeting with and/or testifying before the committee regarding "your views and the insights you obtained during the course of your investigation." In a March 14 letter, Fitzgerald, who is also US attorney in Chicago, turned them down, explaining that the Libby case was still pending (due to possible appeals) and that he did not believe "it would be appropriate for me to offer opinions." In a polite brush-off, he suggested that Waxman review the material introduced during the trial. (Despite receiving regrets from Fitzgerald, Waxman is going ahead with the March 17 hearing featuring Valerie Wilson.)

Fitzgerald is no grandstander. He did not exploit the opportunity to inflict maximum damage on the Bush administration. He brought a narrow case against Libby and convinced a jury. Trying to distort the narrative, Libby’s comrades claim that Fitzgerald’s endeavor was pure politics. The evidence shows they don’t have a case.

As a lot of us predicted, Fitzgerald declined to meet with Congressmen Waxman and Davis about the Libby case, or testify in their hearings. Patrick Fitzgerald is an honorable guy. I think that’s why he’s been such a hero to all of us. He does the right thing repeatedly. We respect him even when he doesn’t do what we want him to do, You don’t hear the Liberal Bloggers attacking him when he only indicts one person, or when he doesn’t go after Rove or Cheney. I think we collectively believe that his devotion is to doing his job, not to any political agenda – including ours.

Frankly, I don’t think it’s his duty to do anything more than he did. We can’t ask him to get us out of this mess. The data from the trial is there for all of us to see. We read Cheney’s notes; saw Libby’s scribbles; heard them conspiring together; heard Libby lie to the Grand Jury; remember how they all lied to us as the case unfolded; know that they distorted the prewar intelligence. We don’t need Fitzgerald for that. If they want outside opinions, let them call emptywheel, or Digby, or eRiposte, or Jane Hamsher. They know as much as Fitzgerald knows now. Maybe more.

No, it’s not Fitzgerald’s job any more. It’s the duty of our duly elected Congressmen, because they’re the only ones left who have the power to do anything. They’re on their own to ferret out the already known deceit and abuse of power that has infested Washington for the six long years of  the Bush Administration. Fitz is going to be a hard act to follow, but that’s just the way it is. Either the Congressional leaders will rise to the task, or they won’t. Let’s hope that there’s one or more among them who will float above the political muck, and lead us out of this wilderness – for no other reason than it’s their job and it’s the right thing to do…

Well, here we are again. The Bush Administration has fired eight U.S. Attorneys because they wouldn’t play ball. Bush, Harriet Miers, Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales, and others were involved. Just with the evidence that’s already public we already know exactly what happened. The denials are cached in carefully contrived phrases – true things saying lies. The stories change to explain the new information as we receive it – carefully designed to not contradict the last story, carefully phrased so as to not be in and of themselves lies, always discounting criticism without giving evidence of any kind. It’s sort of a "catch-me-if-you-can" scenerio that has worked to date – until Libby got cornered. Rove says nothing unless forced, and never uses tracable media. President Bush blusters around making denials, mostly denying that he’s been involved in anything.

Week after week, month after month. The same game over and over. It’s hard to imagine that Alberto will survive this one. The evidence is stacked around him. Even if he stays, he’ll be basically rendered impotent. People will yawn when he talks and anything he does will be put under a microscope. Karl Rove is hard to corner. He’s just very careful. No paper trail. No direct involvement. He knows what he’s doing in the way a cat burglar does. Stealth, quiet, under cover of night.

What gets my goat is that it doesn’t dawn on enough people that we’re in the position of fighting our own government. Our own government, the bastion of our laws and principles is the agent of criminality here. Congress is bogged down in trying to corral our own Executive, rather than conducting te government’s business. And it happens over and over. We’re so used to seeing Bush on T.V. denying things and saying he has confidence in this or that official who just screwed us over that we don’t even remember that that’s not what Presidents usually talk about on T.V. We’re so used to the Administration coming out in force to do a sales job on some policy or program that we’ve forgotten that Presidents and Cabinet members aren’t usually salesmen, they’re statesmen.

If we ever get a real leader, we’re going to have to relearn how they are supposed to act. We’re so used to Talking Points, we’ll have to relearn what just plain Talking sounds like… 

Bush Defends Gonzales’s Decision
Bush Says ‘Mistakes Were Made’ in Explanation to Congress

President Bush expressed confidence in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales on Wednesday, but agreed that "mistakes were made" in the dismissal of eight federal prosecutors, and said it "troubles me" that lawmakers feel his administration was not straightforward.

As he wrapped up a six-day, five-nation tour of Latin America, Bush found himself again forced to confront a political furor back home. He took time out from his Mexican schedule to call Gonzales Wednesday morning and instruct him to go to Capitol Hill to repair his credibility problems with Congress. But Bush denied that politics drove the decision to fire the U.S. attorneys.

"I’ve heard those allegations about political decision making — it’s just not true," Bush said during an appearance with Mexican President Felipe Calderón here before flying back to Washington in the afternoon. He added: "What Al did, and what the Justice Department did, was appropriate. U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president. They can be removed by the president. What was mishandled was the explanation of the cases to Congress."

We’re sitting out here reading nine months of emails between Harriet Myers and Kyle Samson in which they plot and scheme to get rid of Prosecutors who won’t get on board using the Justice Department to prosecute voters cases that might purge Democratic voters. What wasn’t political about that? How would that be presented to Congress to make it okay? And the part about "at the pleasure of the President." We know that. But what we’re saying is that he’s not Louis XIV. We’re not questioning that he’s got the authority to do what he’s doing. We’re saying that there’s a level of accountability for what he does that’s a step above the fact that he has the power. We’re complaining about the basic morality of firing Federal Prosecutors because they won’t follow what we consider to be a blatantly partisan political agenda.

And then he says: "I’ve heard those allegations about political decision making — it’s just not true." We’ve read the emails. We’ve read their performance ratings. What is true? It sure looks, sounds, and quacks like a duck to me. We do understand. And, I hasten to add that the President serves at the "pleasure of" the people and the Congress.

So now a head has rolled. Alberto’s Chief of Staff bit the dust yeasterday. Being a Chief of Staff in  this Administration is like being a King’s food taster in days of gone by – a dangerous job. And one wonders if this is why Harriet Miers resigned. She resigned on January 4th, a month after these firings, for no discernable reason. One wonders if the s__t was already hitting the proverbial fan about these firings and hers was a pre-emptive resignation to dodge the soon-coming bullets. The firings hit the Press a week or so after her resignation best I can reconstruct…

"I acknowledge that mistakes were made here. I accept that responsibility. I stand by the decision, and I think it was a right decision."

 

Alberto Gonzales
Attorney General

American Heritage Dictionary

mis·take   (mÄ­-stāk’)
n.  

1. An error or fault resulting from defective judgment, deficient knowledge, or carelessness.
2. A misconception or misunderstanding.

So, actually, it was not a mistake; Gonzales was irresponsible; and it was a wrong decision. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.