Everything we’ve seen to date is consistent with both hypotheses, but that doesn’t mean my friend’s hypothesis is necessarily true, of course.

“Since the Senate majority is still too slim to support impeachment …, then the best option is ongoing investigations/subpoenas, the whole mishegas.”

If despite its best efforts Congress can’t get answers, impeach ALBERTO GONZALES. The timing has to be right: when he has lost almost all support (so it will be a-political), even among deniers, and before he is fired.

You really REALLY don’t want to lie during impeachment proceedings, so it might be The Best Means for getting to the bottom of this. Plus impeachment disqualifies you for any future government office or job.

FindLaw’s Writ had a John Dean piece on this idea some time back.It makes eminent sense.

The fact that the US MSM has swallowed the British line without any reference to Iran’s assertions that the Brits were captured in Iranian territory is worrying. Blair’s bombast of Iran having ‘days’ to release the captives only adds to that sense of unease. Everybody knows that the Brits by themselves can do sod all. Blair has been burnt toast since the 2005 local elections and he will be forced out by June this year. That is enough time for him to wreak his revenge by tying UK into a prolonged conflict situation. The noises emanating from other EU countries are even more worrying – they (Germany and France most vocally) have pledged full support for UK. It is quite possible that the Brits were in Iranian territory, and given the sophistication of their navigational equipment, knowingly so. Were they the willing proxy to create an ‘incident’?

Does Bush need to go to Congress for overt aggression against Iran? Covert activities have been occurring for some time now. I ask this because the authorisation granted in 2003 is too vague.

Does Bush (Rove) see the expansion of war as a last ditch attempt to silence critics of the decider in chief?

My dad said something interesting to me the other day. In late 1950s and early 1960s, industry made a big switch from reliance on whale fat to hydro carbon derivatives because whales were being hunted to extinction and oil was plentiful with huge untapped reserves. His point was we can do the same today. Maybe this is irrelevant but I didn’t know of this switch till he referred to it casually. He was a research chemist but almost 90 years old now.

I am from Aus but was in the US and Canada for four years until late 2006 and have been hooked by FDL since 2005. You have every right to tell me to stfu but its one world.

“Here’s the plan—-first, we slip in a provision in the Patriot Act, without Congress noticing it, that let’s us replace US attorneys without Senate confirmation.

“Then, we get one of my former political operatives, a guy who did opposition research, and put him in as US attorney in Arkansas (you know, Hillary’s home state). He has subpoena power to do opposition research, he has prosecutorial power to lean on people in Arkansas to say things that we want, and he can bring cases just before election time to drive things our way.

“What could possibly go wrong?”

I suppose it would be protected by executive privilege, if the conversation was just between the two of them. If the conversation led to acts that required investigation as criminal matters, my understanding is that under Nixon cases, executive privilege would give way.

Increasingly, the picture is emerging that the White House sought (and is still seeking) to bring the DOJ under political control. When you consider how awesome the US attorney investigatory power and prosecutorial power is, the potential for gigantic political impact of a political DOJ is clear.

The AG, Rove and White House act like they are guilty of something, and we don’t know what it is they are hiding or why they want to hide it.

I commend the link posted on FDL earlier to TPM:

A key aspect of the U.S. attorney purge that often seems to get overlooked–by those who argue that the firings were business as usual and no different from the removal of USAs at the beginning of a president’s term–is the change to the Patriot Act that was quietly inserted by Sen. Arlen Specter at the behest of the Justice Department.

As close followers of the scandal know, the Patriot Act provision, in essence, transferred the power to appoint interim USAs from the federal district courts to the attorney general and allowed the attorney general to install interim USAs indefinitely, thereby bypassing the Senate confirmation process.
Only the naive or willfully blind would see the Patriot Act amendment as a distinct and separate action from the purge itself. Indeed, vesting such powers in the attorney general was a predicate to the purge, and was one of the very first indications, at least to everyone here at TPM, that the removal of the eight U.S. attorneys was not some random act or unrelated series of acts but a deliberately conceived and executed plan that required time to develop and numerous participants to implement. Otherwise, the Senate confirmation process would have made installing political hacks as USAs difficult and would have provided supporters of the ousted prosecutors with a ready-made platform to challenge the removals publicly.

The individual who physically entered the new language into the statute needs to be questioned under oath about how he or she came to do so. Whoever ordered the language needs likewise to be questioned under oath, and so on up the chain until the purpose and origin of that language is known.

The AG removals very much appear to be part of a larger plan, with an indication of guilty motive inferred from the hidden actions to change legislation, and from intense desire of the administration to hide the truth.

Or maybe it was an “overblown personnel matter” not deserving of the intense media coverage afforded it before last November’s elections?

Josh Marshall says: “But we know that US Attorney David Iglesias was fired because he wouldn’t submit to pressure from Republican activists and members of Congress to issue an election-timed indictment to save New Mexico’s Republican Rep. Heather Wilson.”

He also points out that what is “missing” from the DOJ document dump may be just as important as what has been released up to this point.

So, let’s look at the clues that might indicate what is “missing”:

1) By last October, Bush, Rove and Gonzales had politicized as much as possible the offices of the U.S. Attorneys.

2) The Mark Foley sex scandal broke like a tsunami wave over the House Republican leadership, the White House political strategists and all the Republicans running for election or re-election around the country…including Heather Wilson of New Mexico.

3) David Iglesias, the U.S. Attorney for New Mexico, is contacted during this critical October pre-election time-frame, to generate anti-Democratic Party publicity, to help Heather Wilson in her bid to retain her seat in Congress.

You do see the pattern, don’t you?

In Karl Rove’s mind, the essential thing before any election is to control “the message,” to control “the publicity,” and the Mark Foley sex scandal had turned last year’s Republican election strategy upside down. Instead of Rove ordering the “swift-boating” of Democrats, the Mark Foley sex scandal was “swift-boating” Republicans around the country, and the scandal was based on facts, not on fabricated lies.

Thus, all the Republican-appointed U.S. Attorneys were mobilized to “pushback” against the negative publicity of the Mark Foley sex scandal in an attempt to push this scandal into the background and replace this negative publicity detrimental to Republicans with news reports of contrived Democratic Party improprieties.

This is what is missing in the emails released. Any internal White House deliberations involving the Mark Foley sex scandal, as well as any communications with anyone in the DOJ that refers to the handling of the Mark Foley sex scandal last October, are not being released.

I don’t believe the Mark Foley scandal was the sole reason for the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys in December, but I do believe it served as a catalyst. Why? Because Rove and the neo-con Republican strategists realized that if certain U.S. attorneys were unwilling to “break the law” concerning “pushback” over the Mark Foley sex scandal, then (in Rove’s and their minds) how could these rogue U.S. Attorneys be trusted to “help” the Republican cause in the lead-up to the November 2008 elections? Thus, eight U.S. Attorneys, who chose following the apolitical, non-partisan “rule of law” over helping the Republicans retain control of Congress last year, HAD TO GO.

Which, of course, makes one wonder how corrupt the Republican-appointed U.S. Attorneys who were not fired are? What did they do to help “pushback” last year against the negative Republican publicity generated by the Mark Foley sex scandal? Can any of them be trusted to follow the “rule of law” and put aside their partisan allegiances, especially in the lead-up to the November 2008 elections?

Any “rule of law” American, whether Democrat or Republican or Independent, should be very concerned over the answer to these questions.

Which makes interrogating Monica Goodling, the DOJ’s White House liaison, that much more important, under oath, in public, before a congressional hearing. Last October, during the midst of the Mark Foley sex scandal, she would have been the go-between, passing Rovian partisan instructions to the DOJ and to the U.S. Attorneys on how to handle the fallout from the Mark Foley sex scandal. Hopefully, her “extended leave of absence” doesn’t involve her skipping the country?

Ron @ 78

Somebody (sorry can’t remember who) on the net pointed out only yesterday the concurrence between the nine or so states that Rove declared to be crucial to the 2008 election and the jurisdictions of the fired USA’s. What better way to cover a stolen election, que no? As Rove claims, “you have your math, I hve mine.”

McClatchy, by way of Digby.

Thanks Eli, this shit’s happening so fast I can’t keep track anymore. I need to keep a score card

Alfred Kelgarries @
5

Some FDL readers may not know what a “Zampolit” is. It’s a russian word associated with the dreaded “Political Officer” position. Zampolits made sure everyone, from the general to the private, toed the Party Line. They were immune from even the faint shreds of due process and legal rights in the old soviet union, and to most of the unwritten old-boy patronage protections as well. They could literally whip out their guns and kill on the spot, with impunity, just because. Imagine how much fun life was with them around. And Karlosivitch Rovski is clearly cut from that political cloth. I’m just waiting for him to appoint Rush Limbaugh as the “Minister of Truth”.

we now have one in every dept. a new Regulations officer.

sing it, TiredFed!

I hope you’ll educate us (often) about these ominous apparatchniks.

Help us identify, excoriate, terminate (occupationally – only) and denigrate their actions and offices.

From that flows all good: The unchallenged authority of the executive to shield itself from its citizens while engaging in unprecedented levels of spying on them. The ability to corrupt the legislature by allowing it to raid the cookie jar without respite, and the judiciary by staffing it with neophytes who lack the heart and experience to resist that corruption.

How is that paid for? By corporate sponsors, who are first rewarded with legal immunities, tax subsidies and permission to engage in harmful conduct. News media, for example, become not businesseses that gather and distribute news, but disseminators of propaganda, which camouflages those very actions of govt. Hence, for every Paul Krugman we have one one Ann Coulter, two David Broders, three David Brooks, four Bill O’Reillys and George Will in a pear tree.

That control allows the waging of war and corruption of civil society, by declaring the existence of threats so dire that normal social and legal constraints are caste aside. Which enables more control and less oversight, creating a self-perpetuating vicious cycle.

All of which is paid for by the taxes of middle class sods who think the conduct of govt has anything to do with promoting their – or even some objective – interest, a notion that Mr. Rove believes was best buried with FDR and LBJ.

Chimp and Cheney are on one side claiming breathtakingly vast areas of Executive Privilege, reaching far beyond national security or international diplomacy reasons.

On the other side are a whole army of lawyers and former prosecutors in the Senate and House Judiciaries, many of who are relishing a fight over their Congressionally mandated right and *duty* to provide oversight of the Executive branch.

Even if Fielding does try to take the Chimp/Cheny view, the WH is going to be on the defense for the rest of W’s term. There’s already far too many WH contradictions in play, even before the Sampson and Miers testimony starts in the USA firings.

It looks to be a PR disaster for the Rove and the RNC regardless of how Fielding tries to handle it. Bush’s smirk-mouthed, shifty-eyed attitude in defending Gonzales just makes it look all the worse.

The election really *did* have consequences!