If Bush doesn’t fire her then they need to start digging and digging in GSA for any and all contracting abuses. Waste, fraud, and abuse is rampant and I’m sure Ms. Doan has her finger in quite a few contracts being thrown to either Republican loyalists or personal friends of hers.

Frankly she doesn’t know enough about government contracting or the FAR to hide her tracks successfully. Might not get Bush to fire her on the Hatch Act violations but rampant fraud might get someones attention.

The way I understand it once a Hatch Act violation is found they figured either the President or the AG would realize it was time for that person to go. Unfortunately no one ever realized an administration where Hatch Act violations would be rewarded and not as a reason for dismissal.

The American government would seem to be broken beyond “repair.” When the Republicans were in the majority they insured that they were above the law through bullying and intimidation. Now that they are in the minority they provide cover for lawbreakers to insure they will suffer no consequences. I’m beginning to get the feeling that something more than tweaking of the system will be necessary to undue the harm the conservative agenda has brought the nation.

I have felt this for too long now. I see the crimes being committed and remember when the GOP and the holier-than-thou hypocrites went after Clinton because, well, what will we say to the children if there is no rule of law?

Then the kids see all this blatant unconstitutional behavior, the ones who actually learned about the constitution in school or paid attention in their overcrowded classrooms cramming for all the standardized NCLB tests that prove nothing and do nothing but line the pockets of people like Neil Bush.

Why am I still seething like I did when Nixon won in 1968 shortly before I left for Vietnam? Why are American kids dying again and being forced to kill people so that this charade here called America can continue running in a theater near you?

THis is just so much bullshit. Lying under oath, straight party fealty with no regard for the damage that has been wrought on our system of government, on the moral systems of the students in school of all ages who have no idea that there really was an America that respected doing the right thing prior to 1981.

The Bush family…geezzz where do I start? I distrusted this guy’s father when he was head of the RNC and before. It was that creepy smile and knowing that somehow this guy was involved up to his eyeballs in every crime that led to and issued from Dealy Plaza in that long ago coup that turned me into a cynic at the age of 13.

Where does it stop?? I’m not sure. I know that the people who benefit from it have learned very well how to manipulate public perceptions; I know that the answer doesn’t lie in the Democratic Party or its current crop of leaders.

I’ve gone back to Trotsky, reading all his thoughts and writings about the 1905 revolution and the subsequent one in 1917 and the purges that followed as Stalin bastardized the Bolshevik program and lied through his teeth to the people with the help of the press and the Western powers that were content to allow him to kill his own people as long as they could hold him up to their people as a bogeyman….kind of like Saddam was used, and Osama, and Ho Chi Minh, and Fidel, and Che, and Chavez.

We’ve been used for so long nothing short of root and branch reform will change things.

But it sure is nice to have these useless entertainments in Washington isn’t it? So we can talk to each other and call our representatives and watch them vote however they want to vote.

And watch as the prisons here are filled with young black men and women for violating arcane drug laws while the real thieves loot the Treasury and laugh.

Our very own Potemkin country.

Do svidanya, America.

Issa is certainly slime, and the recall a travesty.

But if California Democrats can’t come up with a better candidate than Gray Davis, we deserve to lose.

Gray Davis was everything vile in public life, as bad as any Republican and it was delightful for me, a lifetime Dem, to vote in favor of throwing him on the streets.

It was a matter of public interest over party–supporting Gray Davis because he was a Dem is the same shit the Republicans run to keep their corrupt leaders in place just because of party loyalty.

I think the GOP was worried that Lurita passed for a white lady at the first round of hearings. Davis’ several mentions (which I haven’t seen but read about here) that she’s an African-American woman seem designed to ensure that the news programs refer to that aspect of her heritage, which is of course very important to the GOP.

They want to show how racist the Democrats are, especially after we beat up on that nice Latino AbuG. It’s all about the outrages Democrats perpetrate on individual pet GOP minorities, not about letting an entire city drown or anything.

Yeah, she’s a black person now. I’ll bet she was a hell of a lot more Creole before she got into trouble. Paper bag party, anyone? As far as all of the racist outrages visited upon blacks by liberals, what are they? I always see converstaives on these blogs say that, but I have yet to see any of them cite a concrete example of what they are talking about. It’s just a rhetorical trick they are fond of turning.

After she said she met with DAVIS (implying him alone), requestioned, she admitted there were others…

Basically, the witness was coached by (all?) the repug members of the committee prior to the hearing. Is this ethical?

Not sure just how this is germane to a discussion of the Gray Davis recall, but here goes:

– destroyed the property tax system that had made California’s public education system the best in the world.

– Prevented many retired persons from being forced to sell their houses because they could not afford property taxes in the wake of a decade of the California real-estate price escalator. The retirees viewed this as a good thing; those newcomers who afterwards bought the house next door and have to pay three or five times as much property tax on a similar property do not. Had the unintended consequence of eventually locking many elderly retirees into a house too big for their needs, because they would not be able to afford the property taxes on the smaller house they would otherwise have traded down for. The lady across the street from me is in this boat: lives alone in a four-bedroom three-bath house with a huge yard that she and her late husband have owned since the early 60’s.

– Energized the Viguerie tax-revolt wave that swept Reagan into the Presidency.

Yes, the Enron-engineered blackout was a crime. Yes, Issa exploited it to drive the recall vote.

But if Davis had been any good to anyone, ever, as a functioning Democrat, the recall would have failed. He simply had no friends — only non-enemies.

I voted for him because he was a Democrat, not because he had ever won my support.

I voted against the recall for a host of reasons.

Nevertheless. Davis was a weak candidate, and his weakness left him vulnerable.

JEP @ 236

joel hanes @ 230

Issa is certainly slime, and the recall a travesty.

But if California Democrats can’t come up with a better candidate than Gray Davis, we deserve to lose.

Gray Davis didn’t cause the California blackouts, Enron and their buddies did.

That is, without dispute, the factor that led to Davis’ unceremonious removal. You can argue all day that he was not very popular with Sacramento special interest groups, but it was the $35 Billion blackout larceny that turned Californians against him.

Davis was much more a victim than many Californians want to admit.

I know, I lived ther then, and I watched elderly folks suffer in the sweltering heat of the blackouts.

It is a shame so many people fell for the recall deception, and clearly, that big lie stilllives.