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Jeffrey Feldman makes note of this from yesterday's press conference:
THE PRESIDENT: Earlier today, my staff met with congressional leaders about the resignations of U.S. attorneys.
Says Feldman:
President Bush repeated "resignation" 4 conspicuous times in his 12-minute appearance, yesterday, including the coveted opening line of the entire event. So important is this word to the White House that they even used it in the title they gave the press conference on their website ("President Bush Addresses Resignations of U.S. Attorneys").
The Boy King also said he was willing to give Congress "unprecedented" access by deigning to let Harriet Miers and Karl Rove go up to the hill and openly lie testify with no transcript and without being under oath. Henry Waxman begs to differ, saying "Contrary to the President's contention, there is extensive precedent for officials in these positions to appear before Congress."
The authoritarian cultists of the base with their arctic-temperatured IQs may slavishly embrace the opportunity to dismiss this all as partisanship, but they excell at nothing so much as projection and we should expect that they would harken back to the Clinton witch hunt and look into their own hearts for motivation. They do not have the capacity to look at the simple fact that Bush is flat-out lying when he speaks to them, and to us, and to draw appropriate conclusions. They didn't see the petulant child pitching a temper tantrum yesterday, they saw what Chris Matthews sees:
God, he was Jim Bowie at the Alamo tonight! I‘ve never seen him like that, at least in a long time.
The Cult of the Codpiece is still, it seems, intact.
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Zero!
oooo. close. but no cigar.
OOOh good one Jane. Can I plagerize that?
forced resignations = fired. or so I’ve been told.
Hi Jane!!
Lhp, anything new last couple of days :)
If Bush sees this pretzel he might choke. Better keep it away from him.
Jane -
Borrowing one of Steely Dan’s album titles, how does pretzel logic work? :)
since I ended up near the top (so rare for me - usually 3 threads behind), I thought I would post this:
Do you suppose Leahy or Conyers could use some experienced advice on issuing sticky subpoenas and contempt citations? Well, I hear Al Gore is in town. This from Rep. Gore back in the day (to Joseph Califano):
“Mr. Secretary, in our society, laws, principles, and rights are often in conflict. We have two in conflict in the instance.
On the one hand, we have article I of the U.S. Constitution. On the other we have section 301(j) of the Federal Food and Drug Cosmetic Act.
You have chosen to place more importance on section 301(j) of the Federal Food and Drug Cosmetic Act than on article I of the U.S. Constitution.”
Congressional Research Service (CRS) Report, Congressional Investigations: Subpoenas and Contempt Power; 4/2/2003.
Accept no substitues.
Chris Matthews needs to just blow the Preznint and get it over with.
Do you suppose he spits or swallows?
I don’t understand why people are questioning the president when he’s fighting terror.
Perfect Jane!
and snowballs was sporting same Codpiece proudly today in his presser.
(replaying now on cspan 3)
Jane. So glad to see your wonderful hand at work again. Stay warm. Stay happy. Hope your appetite is strong.
TRex @ 8
gargles then swallows, i bet.
TRex — spew alert, please!
“unprecedented” my ass. only for his majesty. been reading on the history of subpoenas and contempt citations. a long line of dubious characters. and 3,000 pages? has anyone counted how many are unduplicated or are just pure junk?
From thinkprogress:
Gonzales reaches out. “Embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales met this afternoon with several Republican Senators, including Orrin Hatch, Jon Kyl, John Cornyn and Jeff Sessions. … The lunch meeting held at the Department of Justice, sources said, was initiated by Gonzales. A source familiar with the meeting says it was an attempt by Gonzales to reach out to Republicans who have been decidedly unhappy with how he has handled the US Attorney mess.”
What did the fly on the wall hear & see?
I’m not sure that kind of talk is appropriate for this blog ;)
posted this downstairs - has it already been discussed here ???
via Think Progress
(pdf warning)
more e mails emerge from 18 day gap
Salt Lake City Tribune has more
[Mod Note; correct link is here] link
TiredFed @
11
Appetite good. Nothing really seems to affect that.
wow. talk about dubious characters. Hatch, Kyl, Cornyn and Sessions? can you think of a more unsavory bunch? never mind.
eCAHNomics @ 15
just getting the story straight, ….moving right along……
cbl @ 17
cbl, that salt lake trib link takes me to a www3 website for internet protocols.
please explain.
Rove and Miers can ‘chat’ with Congress?
but they can’t do so publicly or under oath?
Participants in the “chat” can take notes but not transcribe?!?!
Are they permitted to remember the chat, deerleader?
JH. glad to hear. my mother-in-law (we were buddies before I met her daughter) had a twofer, leukemia and lymphoma. two years of chemo and she’s back to her fighting weight (115). no more CA. tough row to hoe but they do amazing things these days. better living thru chemicals, eh?
Speaking of arctic temperature IQ’s, Brit Hume’s “Grapevine” cohorts just discussed global warming - you guys can’t miss this, hope C&L will have it later.
scary, ain’t it?
oops. gotta run. basketball practice. makes one a tiredfed. l8r
Lindy @ 21
bad linky
try this for the SLC Tribune
sorry Lindy,
here ya go
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_5487582
You know, sometimes I think the neo-convicts are living in some sort of parallel universe unconnected to the real world…
I know there have always been different operational paradigms for dems and repugs, but these past 6 years are too much like the twilight zone…
TiredFed @
7
Great idea. But how about priming the pump first?
The Dems should give the private, unsworn interviews a try. Immediately after the Rove meeting, Conyers and Leahy should make the following statement:
Let Rove deny it (as Lyndon Johnson might put it). Wait a news cycle.
If Rove does not appear, Dems should enforce the subpoenas.
Early this a.m. I reviewed DOJ email PDF 10.1 that included the various resignation letters. Looked to me like the Attorneys had been provided “resignation” instructions and/or boilerplate text. Here is how I characterized that section of the PDF:
Next several pages are resignation letters, most of which include the stock phrase “Serving the United States as a United States Attorney has been the highest honor and most fulfilling duty of my public career.”
p 21 - 12/14 resignation letter of John McKay to Judge Gonzalez. Mentions pride in “extensive use of Title III wiretaps and unprecedented law enforcement information sharing through…LInX”
p 22 - 12/14 resignation letter of John McKay to Pres Bush
p 23 - 12/18 resignation letter of Paul Charlton to AG
p 24 - 12/18 resignation letter of Charlton to Pres Bush
p 25 12/19 resignation letter of Bud Cummins to AG. Includes “Your leadership has been marvelous.”
p 26 - 12/19 resignation letter of Cummins to Pres Bush
p 27 - 1/16 - resignation letter of Carol Lam to AG
p 28 - 1/16 resignation letter of Lam to Pres Bush
p 29 - 1/17 resignation letter of Daniel Bogden to AG
p 30 - 1/17 resignation letter of Bogden to Pres Bush
p 31 - 1/17 resignation letter of David Iglesias to AG. Includes “As the son of an immigrant father from Panama, this job has been the culmination of the American dream…It was a tremendous honor to serve for a trailblazer like yourself…I respectfully recommend FAUSA Larry Gomez to serve as Interim United States Attorney….I will be sending you a token of my appreciation - a hand-made mola my cousin in Panama made for you. I think you will like it. Vaya con Dios.”
p 32 - 1/17 resignation letter of Iglesias to Pres Bush. Refers to being part of administration “in a watershed period of America’s history” and knowing he “wanted to be part of [Bush’s] team” the first time they met in summer 2000.
p 33 - 2/23 resignation letter of Margaret Chiara to AG
hey, about that NH phone jamming thingy -
TPM
WOW. Does anyone know where he gets his drugs? I mean the gov’t chemists and growers MUST be making some serious sh*t for the Chimpster. Too bad the rest of us can’t have some.
http://www.americanprogress.or.....court.html
Re: MZM
“Remarkably, the first sale made by the fledgling company was to the Bush White House. The product: “office furniture.” The White House continued doing business directly with Wad(sic), giving him several additional contracts worth more that $600,000.”
cc in nm @ 29
I think you’ll like this video
Big Brother State
egregious @ 5
YEP, most of the more prominent Fedral Practitioners are up in arms. EW keeps finding fascinteing tidbits and I’ve been trying to data mine the DOJ website and USAO websites to nail down details. It’s maddening.
Fromthe DOJ website it looks like there were 21 USA’s not appointed in the normal way, not just the 8 we knew they were trying to do.
Also, and this may be up at the Muck, from the document dump it appears that there are 2 more that were slated to resign on March 9th.Obviously events intervened to prevent that, but we can’t tell yet whether or not they ever got the phone calls lowering the boom.
Their names were redacted. EW, genius that she is, did her count the characters in the redacted word trick again, and one of those names has 10 letters.
dakine01 @ 33
Afghanistan??
TRex @
8
We actually have seen Fluffer Chris so excited that he was drooling.
-GSD
cbl @ 28
Thank you.
Cult of the Codpiece good one! insightful humor! This Authoritaian Personality thing might be sexual in nature Chris Mathews and most of the MSM seem to like being lied to and bossed around. Bush does wrong and they buy his excuses and cover for him like the family of an alcoholic often does. Enablers show their love by helping the disfunctional people in their lives continue to function.
TiredFed @
19
How about Bush, Cheney, Rove and Gonzales?
Paging Lorena Bobbitt, Paging Lorena Bobbitt
I dunno. I hope the Alamo analogy turns out accurate. Complete massacre, you know.
God, he was Jim Bowie at the Alamo tonight! I‘ve never seen him like that, at least in a long time.
Works for me. We know how that Alamo thing ended.
Hi Cujo! Great minds…
gimme one of the bugman’s glue traps. i know exactly where to put it.
The analogy of the Alamo is actually an apt one. Jim Bowie did not survive it.
I’d say Matthews swishes it around a bit and then spits, like a wine tester, although he certainly doesn’t examine it for clarity.
We shouldn’t forget that there actually are some USA’s who did resign. Tom Heffelfinger in MN mysteriously needed to find time to spend with his family and was replaced by Racheal Paulose, senior counsel to Paul McNulty. We had some close elections in MN so it fits into the scheme of positioning partisan attorneys in swing states.
http://www.mncampaignreport.co.....iaryId=298
(Phoenix Woman mentioned this story a while back)
The Bush deal on the attorney firings scandal is just the latest in a long series. John McCain thought he had a deal on torture which Bush promptly vitiated with a signing statement. Then there was Arlen Specter’s deal on the warrantless NSA wiretapping which would have given the Administration even more than it was asking for by retroactively legalizing all aspects of the program and then some. And there was the Warner, McCain, and Graham deal which resulted in the infamous Military Commissions Act which threw out habeas corpus, scorned the Geneva Conventions, established kangaroo courts, and sanctioned torture (again).
So when Bush offers up Alberto Gonzales who was going to testify anyway and whom no one believes anymore about anything, a safe venue for Karl Rove to lie in, and a decidedly incomplete and selective release of documents, this is in keeping with what they have done before.
In other words, when Bush people start talking about deals, hold on to your wallets, folks, and anything else you value.
What the world needs now is more oxytocin and more oxytocin,
and something to cut the testosterone.
eCAHNomics @
15
With that bunch? Much guffawing and a quick circle jerk between courses.
Many thanks to you and EW for your indefatigable efforts. It sounds like you are ahead of the pack as usual. Keep up the great work!
Thx Elliott… I’m can only get dial-up in the wilds of northern NM at this point (very painful), unless I do the satellite thing… so I will download this later tonight and watch…
Chrissy has some serious issues re Georgie.
I’m just saying
I caught Matthews last night and almost couldn’t believe my ears. What President Bush was he talking about? Certainly not the one I saw on teh teevee.
cc in nm @ 53
you’re welcome!
Jim Bowie was ill and was confined to his cot in his quarters during the battle of the Alamo.
old gold @ 42
sorry, I can’t resist…
Do you know what you get when you call 1-800-bobbitt?
Cut-off….
Great article by Feldman - thanks for highlighting it here.
So, what are the odds that Bush is gonna choke on this pretzel? My guess is that he ends up a bit bruised, falls down, but he survives.
Unlike the original “pretzel choking” moment, I think others around him will not be so lucky. My US DOJ Scandal bracket has:
- the “missing 18 days of emails” start trickling out this Friday and Saturday, but more (and also documents - note SnowJob corrected himself quickly in his presser today when he started to say the admin will provide “all docume… all emails”) will be held back for another week.
- Miers & Sampson will testify, under oath in an open session of Congress by April 1.
- Gonzo “resigns” by April 1.
-Bush declares “mission accomplished”/”victory” over the Democrats by April 4. He claims that the fishing didn’t reveal any wrongdoing.
- Rove refuses to testify and they stall on this, hoping that Miers, Sampson and Gonzo sacrifice is enough. By April 12, the whole scandal becomes bigger than even the Republicans feared, and Rove ends up testifying in limited fashion w/o oath by April 20. (they might move this up to during the post-Easter week, when the public might not be tuning in so much).
Some are luky that way. When my sister was going through her treatment she could almost always go to work immediately after. Here’s to you.
(yet another amazing post, do we even need to say that for FDL anymore?)
ps - caught the link to TRex on Raw Story, FDL Friggin rocks!
In this e-mail here:
http://www.docstrangelove.com/.....-3#Page_25
there appeared to be three names redacted in a list of names of USAs to be forced out. There was also a list of folks “rumored to be leaving” that was completely redacted.
Thx Elliott… I’m can only get dial-up in the wilds of northern NM at this point (very painful), unless I do the satellite thing… so I will download this later tonight and watch…
Albuquerque here, and the wind was terrile today Ahh, spring in NM
from the leftcoaster:
CNN’s Ed Henry today, after watching Tony Snow dance like a high school dork:
I think also, another thing to look at, I followed up a question about executive privilege. You heard Tony Snow at the end there saying the president has no recollection of being involved in this decision to fire the US attorneys. So we asked the question then, well why are you citing executive privilege - or at least suggesting you will, and yesterday the president said the principle at stake here is candid advice from his advisers to the president - if the president was not involved in the decision, then how can you cite executive privilege on something he was really not involved in? And Tony Snow basically said, it’s a good question and I don’t know the answer.
Whoever let Ed Henry into the MSM? He actually does good work. How long before he’s either compromised or fired? Didn’t he come from some inside-the-beltway rag like Roll Call?
Well, they’re different mentions of an unnamed person. So it’s not clear they’re the same. But the weird thing is, these two attorneys are not on DOJ’s list. They refer to their list at one point–it includes all the known ousted attorneys. But there are two more, we know.
WTF !! ! Cspan 3 has Move America Forward. SHOWING IRAQ WAR COMMERCIALS to be released this week. WTF
LandOfTheFree @ 59
Some site had a poll on Gonzo’s resignation. I chose Friday, April 13 at 4:45.
lolo @ 65
disgusting, eh? following commander codpiece’s script by the letter.
pimping war.
Thanx
XYZ and cujo
EW has been doing her usual microscopic analysis and will have sucked all the juice to be had out of these docs before you know it.
More developing I’m sure.
forgive me if this has already been addressed, but if the Judiciary Committee subpoenas Rove and Miers, are they bound to show up as in a grand jury investigation?
If they don’t appear, is Congress’ only recourse to take it before the Supreme Court, or are there other options?
thanks.
I’m going home catch y’all later
Elliott @
50
I’d vote for the afghani and/or Hawaii buds myself…
looseheadprop @ 68
“The details are our friends.”
————–Marcy Wheeler, 2007
Oh btw when you’ve been complimented by the great lhp herself….well there just isn’t anything higher.
Here’s a nice bit from Ed Henry on CNN, via Atrios:
So is this a hoot, or what? If you’re not involved, no priviledge, and if you are involved ….
cc in nm @ 69
Yeah there is another. Stephen PArris CPA (and my hero) linked to a Supreme Court case the other day that involved a Congressional investigation into a corrupt US AG.
WHen DOJ would not enforce the Congressional subpoena, they had the Sargent at Arms go out and arrest the witness.
Congress don’t need no stinkin’ help from ABu, it can enforce it’s own damn subpoena. At least if that case is still good law. I should really go Shepardize it before I get all happy and stuff.
Apologies if this has been posted, I saw it via a commenter at Think Progress:
http://www.realcities.com/mld/.....ton_nation
“the details are our friends”
Sounds like a great title for another book?
Which is, of course, another way of saying “the facts are our friends.”
Which explains why Marcy is a champion of the reality-based community and Kryptonite to the Bush administration.
The harder bush fights the Subpenoas the guilter he looks, the longer this story goes on the more average people get to hear over and over again bush’s spin endlessly repeated by GOP cutouts on the MSM. And they hear our arguments which are differnt because we all have differnt takes on the issue. Karl a lie works if it is repeated endlessly over and over again in a Vaccum with no competeing noise. While Karl lulls you to sleep we work on the concious mind which is alert and pays attention to difference. By being differnt and fighting back for once our methods should destroy karl’s propaganda technique. Lies work fast and best when unopposed and endlessly repeated truth takes time and differences of opinion engage the concious mind. Didn’t Gobbels teach you that lesson Karl?
This came up earlier. The report of the 298Dem’s investigated bu Bushco - do we ave names and/or locations? Would love to see which USA’s did the investigations. Something not mentioned, I’d really, really really like to see the 63(?) investigated repugs.
The authoritarian cultists of the base with their arctic-temperatured IQs…
So cruel! So accurate! And while the Arctic is warming up, Bush’s clods are not getting any smarter.
1,462 DAYZ AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND..
Citizen Hamsher and the Firepup Patriots:
Great post Jane (”…arctic temperatured IQ’s…” ROFLMAO).
Can any of the lawyers out there clear up some confusion out here about whether or not appeals of subpoenas to the executive can be expedited? I kinda remember that the subpoena for the Nixon tapes was rushed right thru the appeals court to the Supremes in a matter of a couple a weeks…will a contest of congressional subpoenas be tied up in the court process for months?
KEEP THE FAITH, THE SYSTEM HAS BEEN HIJACKED BUT IT CAN BE RECOVERED!!
Colleen military mom @ 54
Matthews is still working through some issues with his father.
Which is appropriate, because so is Bush.
that’s Spocko’s gal Melanie Morgan and Howard Kaloogian
Kaloogian was the guy who posted pics of Istanbul neighborhoods attempting to pass them off as ‘violence free, democracy lovin” Baghdad
Drunk or sober, Mr. Bush yesterday gave us his best “frat president ‘tude, pissed that somebody took his convertible to the car wash with the top down.”
Mr. Bush showed neither leadership nor political sense in allowing himself to be so easily goaded into a slurred temper tantrum by those in his administration who have most to hide from Congressional, indeed, prosecutorial, investigations.
Mr. DeLay is under INDICTMENT. Mr. Cheney just saw his closest aide convicted of four felonies, and felt the prosecutorial breathing close behind him. Mr. Rove is even more concerned: he knows how all the pieces fit together, he cut them that way.
Jane,
I’m not a fan of Chris Matthews, but his invocation of Jim Bowie at the Alamo was rather double-edged, no?
I hope that the President, like Bowie, elects to make the White House his Alamo and gets his ass killed.
Morris Sheppard @ 73
you go to jail?
Morris Sheppard @ 73
I still don’t understand how the White House Counsel could have been aware of this stuff going on in September, and yet Bush has never heard about this. Doesn’t the WH Counsel serve as a legal adviser to the President on policy matters? Why was Miers, if we are to believe what Bush is saying through Snow, involved in this if the President didn’t know about it?
http://www.docstrangelove.com/.....-3#Page_25
That’s the e-mail from Sampson to Miers that talks about “if we push USAs out and then don’t have replacements ready”.
Matthews flips a coin to see whose side he’s on before each show. If it comes up in favor of the Democrats, he keeps flipping until he gets the Republics. Fair and balanced.
Fact for the mass media:
ONLY THE PRESIDENT CAN FIRE U.S. ATTORNEYS.
Thank you.
TiredFed @
14
About 99% useless but the 1% that’s useful is very revealing. Then there’s the matter of the missing 18 days from the middle of November through December 7 2006. Plus whatever else they’re withholding just to obstruct the process.
Some suggested the other night over at TPMuckraker putting together a Wiki of the documents. That would be of limited value IMO since so little of it, in actual page counts, is substantive. Most lawyers I know comb through voluminous produced documents and pick out the “Hot Docs” rather quickly.
Well, on the matter of details, there IS one or two greater compliments. ;-p
But I’ll take LHP’s compliments for today…
Got EPU’d in the last thread…
I’ve been working on a project involving 5th grade science today. One of the questions is about the sun, and, since I spent a fair amount of time reading statements like, “the sun is only a medium sized star”, I had The Sun Song running through my head for much of the day.
…
What other fun science-y songs do you know of?
(The video for Mammal at the link above is mostly cute, but I could have done without seeing that guy lighting his flatulance on fire the second time They Might Be Giants sang “maintaining the very high metabolism rate they have”. You’ve been warned.)
An 18 day document gap? A Nixon redux? A mere coincidence? People of this ilk seem to never learn.
Defining George Bush: Head…meet board.
See a tongue-in-cheek visual of George Bush once again beating his head with a board…as he searches for the Holy Grail…here:
www.thoughttheater.com
Give Matthews the benefit of the doubt, he’s fair and unbalanced.
-GSD
Awesome, would love to see Karl baby being handcuffed and taken away in public!!
Pls let us know if it is still a good law….!!
Why does Karl Rove need to be under oath? Because even when he has the threat of perjury hanging over his head, it takes him FIVE TRIES to give testimony that isn’t provably false. That needs to be repeated over and over and over.
al gore at the hearing on lehrer report on pbs==
in response to a repub-
when you have a baby with a fever you take it to the doctor, you don’t consult a science fiction novel…….etc……..wow, wish i had cspan so i could have heard him tear ‘em up………
and i think he’s doing some emotional eating, which shows conflict, maybe he is thinking of running and is not listening to himself…….
emotional eating is stifling your inner motivations, think he’s doin’ a little of that from what i saw……….eatin’ better more whole foods might bring his brain back around to a clear head and to realizing that we need him……and that he could do it, too………
yeah, i know a little snarky, but genuine…….it’s true……..
looseheadprop @
36
Did I mention EW is *dreamy!!!*?
TPhilip @ 90
Cujo has alredy set up a wiki, it’s called Gonzopedia . I think it will be invaluable, since we are not a self-contained lawyer’s office, and the hot docs *are* being identified. The wiki allows us to aggregate and correct our understanding of the whole body of work done by thousands of individuals.
I get this for just not appering, but what happens if a court (SCOTUS) allows the exec priviledge bullshit. We’re just fucked at that point, right?
You know, George Bush said he really feels sorry that all of this about the firings of the USA’s was dragged out in the public.
He so prefers to have his freshly dispatched political cadavers sink silently to the bottom of the lake without anyone knowing.
-GSD
P.S. Has anyone mulled over how Bush belittled Seedy Gonzales by nicknaming him Fredo after the feckless and border-line retarded Corleone sibling?
Cujo359@87
I still don’t understand how the White House Counsel could have been aware of this stuff going on in September, and yet Bush has never heard about this. Doesn’t the WH Counsel serve as a legal adviser to the President on policy matters? Why was Miers, if we are to believe what Bush is saying through Snow, involved in this if the President didn’t know about it?
Does raise interesting mental pictures about what actually goes on at this WH. I suspect that W is informed of very little–it would only confuse him.
The slow relentless wheels of Justice through Congressional Investigations are beginning to turn inexorably toward Impeachment.
Make no mistake about it. Just a matter of time. This nation needs to
be cleansed from the slime of this criminal government. May I make
a suggestion. After Fitzgerald finishes his job in Chicago with
the Conrad Black case, he should resign his post and be immediately
hired by the House of Representatives to begin building a case for
Impeacbment of GWBush and Cheney.
Would this not galvanize and electrify the process. Who else but
the Fitz to help restore Consitutional Government to this Nation.
cc in nm @ 69
Congress has the authority to order their arrest for contempt of Congress, via Congressional marshalls. That would lead