The Republican Party is the Nazi Party.

Just wan to make one thing very clear. I have not worked for the governement for a VERY long time. I still maintain relationships with old friends and colleagues from those days, but I certainly was not around for the Monica Goodling days.

I apologize for the mispellings. I tried, but not hard enough to proof. It should have been “culture” in the last sentence.

I haven’t seen many of your posts before, and am sorry to have missed them. I look forward to many more.

I want to make clear that I didn’t want to appear to be painting DOJ with such broad brush strokes that would be so foolish and wrong not to recognize that there were and are many dedicated, talented attorneys at DOJ, and no doubt you were one of them.

It is true that many of the abuses that were political and the culture so distorted took hold during the Bush administration. But certainly not all, and some of them are the most important. We both know how over his head Gonzales was. It was shocking to me to see someone appointed AG who had virtually no federal litigation experience, and many of us could care less that “Fredo” Gonzales was on the Supreme Court of Texas. He was clearly in an environment that was over his head on so many levels, and it is very easy to discern that Gonzales perceived AG as an extension of being the President and West Wing’s protector and legal counsel rather than the administrator for an independent non-political branch.

Certainly the continued rearing of Hans von Spakovsky’s head is evidence of culture corruption at DOJ and the deteriorating hold that the Bush administration’s attorneys in the West Wing have on it.

I can’t imagine what you and your collegues, that you respected at DOJ, thought of twits like Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson with a law degree from a law school that is a joke coming from a job as an “opposition researcher.” Rachel Brand and a cast of others on that DOJ forced resignation bus due to law breaking behavior also come to mind.

You could not have had more inexperienced individuals with no federal ligitation experience conducting interviews of Immigration Judge candidates and vetting federal judicial candidates as well. These twits also had career decision making and evaluation input into the careers of seasoned US Attorneys like Bud Cummings in Arkansas that was unprecedented.

What the hell were twits like these doing at EOUSA?

And why the hell didn’t the ranks of US Attorneys bitch hugely about it? They just shrugged it off, not making a peep until Gonzales had conspicuously made a clown of himself by his actions and his surreal testimony before SJC.

I want to hear one solid argument that Monica Lewinsky who isn’t trained as an attorney could not have done a better job than Monica Goodling and Sampson with less damage to DOJ.

Goodling with no litigation experience whatsoever, was given the duty of vetting immigration judges and making major personnel decisions impacting career U.S. Attorneys.

Rachel Brand, with no litigation experience whatsoever, was Assistant AG for the Office of Legal Policy and Acting Assistant Attorney General, Principal Deputy AG at OLC, LOL focusing on the “war on terrorism” until forced to resign in July. You could see her sitting in the coaching/briefing section for Alito and Roberts during their hearings. These are two individuals who will make the significant damage inflicted by Renquist, aptly underscored by Alan Dershowitz, numerous times, pale in comparison for the next 30 or more years and push the S. Ct. considerably closer to a Star Chamber

While Brand was Anthony Kennedy’s clerk and a clerk in the Massachusettes Supreme Court, she lacked any significant federal litigation experience. It matters little that she made Harvard law review. She had top responsibilities at DOJ without ever having litigated in a federal court room.

I don’t know if you’re aware that the ranks of immigration judges appointed by DOJ are replete with individuals who have no litigation experience in an immgration court and often in a federal courtroom who have to continually ask attorneys what they should do.

Also if a case is in the Soutern District of Florida in Miami vs. the Northern District of Georgia, and an argument for asylum is made on the grounds of danger and death if the immigrant is deported, the rates of granting asylum vary from 95% denied in Georgia by most immigration judges to 95% granted in Miami by most immigration judges.

When the Voting Rights Committee of seasoned DOJ career people decided against many of the ID requirements of Republican secretary of state, the Bush administration inserted political hacks to overrule them.

Often not underscored by the mainstream press as well are the fact that concerning immigration is that the wait for legitimate immigration in many districts is routinely 10-15 years in a bureaucracy that spanned from the Carter administration through the current Bush administration.

Often not underscored by mainstream press as well is that immigration judge jobs have often been plums awarded politically in every administration.

Abuses Common to Any Administration

There are three factors that have been prevelant in current administrations all the way back through Franklin D. Roosevelt.

1) Again, the ranks of federal trial and appellate judges who are not drawn from former US Attorneys and that figure is upwards of 85-90%, have NO, and I hope everyone can read NO previous experience litigating in a federal court room.

The Eleventh Circuit has several judges who never litigated a federal trial case in any capacity and never had to “craft” or argue a federal motion of any type in a federal trial or appellate court, or write a federal appellate brief or appear at a federal appellate oral argument.

I’d make the analogy of this eggregious lapse in experience for many federal judges of having a surgeon do mastectomies or significant trauma surgery with no training whatsoever. That’s exactly what that is tantamount to and it causes the same degree of damage.

Just as subspecialty surgeons have to present hundreds of cases in specified areas before they can take their Boards, any individual who takes the federal bench should be required to have litigated so many federal civil cases and so many federal criminal cases.

This should be legislated by Congress, and this requirement should include Deputy AGs and AGs as well and anyone who gets a job in the EOUSA. It would have prevented some of the desintigration at DOJ in the Shrub regime.

2) and 3) Further, the Federal Rules of Evidence (FRE) and Federal Rules of Criminal Proceedure (FRCrP) have been heavily weighed towards the government (your old office) since Roosevelt if not before then.

These rules are promulgated largely by former US Attorneys with an unwavering “screw the defense bar” agenda. 28 U.S.C. § 2073(b) and 28 U.S.C. § 2073(a)(2) stacks five advisory committees and a standing committee stacked largely with former AUSAs hardwired with a pro-prosecution agenda and they submit the rules they write to a Judicial Conference that his heavily weighted with right winged former AUSAs during any Presidential administration.

Despite the allegation that meetings of rule committees are widely open to the public and widely announced, the “public” hardly knows they exist.

The interpretations of these rules when not made by “former AUSA judges” are largely made by judges again with no prior litigation experience in a federal courtroom.

Finally, I think that bloggers on blogs like this one need to look at one very nasty truth.

The Democrats are consistently and in unwavering fashion enabling every scintilla of illegal Bush behavior by going along with Republican rubber stampers every single step of every single markup and every single piece of legislation reported out of any committee, because they are cowed by the politics of fear. They are also approving every single right-winged Judicial candidate like Southwick and countless others. Ferragamo Feinstein will lead any Republican charge that moves.
The print and TV media is dim witted and few of them recognize this partly because they are cowed by the politics of fear. Have you witnessed former U.S. Attorney Fran Townsend’s idiot press conferences lately?

You’re certainly right. Ros Mauskopf, is a new Judge in the Eastern District of New York. She has of course, never worked in any defense capacity whatsoever consistent with the ranks of the Federal Judiciary being a perk predominantly for former US Attorneys and the other population is ridiculously people who have never litigated in federal court period. Her parents were both holocaust survivers, and ironically, now she will have the chance to impose several Naziesque rulings onto the defense bar and their clients–the type that would have made Hitler proud. Her lack of judgement is evident in the way she was cowed and made distortion after distortion in quotes to the press about the alleged Kennedy airport plot as did the pathetic candidate, Rudy 911 propelling a candidacy based on exponential fear mongering.

I want to emphasize that no one objective with your type experience could coutenance Judge Micheal Mukasey’s eggregious adoption of the US Attorneys material witness abuses or his nasty comments towards a defendent who was in fact severely beaten or his clearly stupid remark that the defendant didn’t look like he had any medical problems. Had Mukasey any significant experience in an emergency room, (highly unlikely since it is doubtful he could get into or stay in med school for any length of time) he would learn you don’t “haul off and look” at people to assess whether they have severe internal bleeding from the blunt abdominal trauma that this defendent received.

Maybe that’s an attribute of a PBWT (Patterson Belknap) partner I’m not aware of.

Before the hearing, Mr. Awadallah told his lawyer that he had been beaten in the federal detention center in Manhattan, producing bruises that were hidden beneath his orange prison jumpsuit. But when his lawyer told this to Judge Mukasey, the judge seemed little concerned.

“As far as the claim that he was beaten, I will tell you that he looks fine to me,” said Judge Mukasey, who was nominated by President Bush last week to be his third attorney general and is now facing Senate confirmation hearings. “You want to have him examined, you can make an application. If you want to file a lawsuit, you can file a civil lawsuit.”

The problem with the idiot statement Mukasey made medically is that someone severely beaten in the areas where this defendant was can, and often does get into a critical situation from internal bleeding in a matter of minutes and the bleed would have nothing to do with “how it looked” to Mukasey or anyone else, nor would it have to start at any given period of time.

Filing a law suit based on the Supreme Court rulings of “deliberate indifference” applied to medical care in a prison is not on the same planet with timely quality emergency care in Manhatten.

One wonders how loudly Mukasey would whine if he, his wife, or a member of his family were beaten similarly. Would he be rushed to the hospital, or would he expect to “file a civil suit.” That’s the Mukasey standard of care, and more importantly reveals what an idiot this individual is and how biased he is unless the client is a large corporation paying huge fees to PBWT.

“Even though Mr. Awadallah was not charged at the time with any crime and had friends and family in San Diego who would vouch that he had no terrorist ties, Judge Mukasey ordered that he be held indefinitely, a ruling he made in the cases of several other so-called material witnesses in the Sept. 11 investigations. A prison medical examination later identified the bruises across his body.

Judge Mukasey’s comments at the 2001 hearing were revealed in a once-secret 16-page transcript provided to The New York Times by a lawyer for Mr. Awadallah.”

There’s an excellent chance that had this prisoner needed serious medical care, he sure as hell would have not gotten it under the wing of the B.O.P.

Post-9/11 Cases Fuel Criticism for Nominee

One outcome of this is corruption of the work product, the avoidance of prosecutions harmful to the current regime, allowance of routine prosecutions considered neutral, and a harsh focus on politically motivated prosecutions. They needn’t lead to convictions: in an administration led almost exclusively by PR flacks, it is the headlines that count. Just as wars needn’t lead to peaceful co-existence; collapsing civil rights, diverting hundreds of billions to the military and outsourced government contractors, and tripling the price of oil are just fine, thank you.

Another lethal outcome is corruption of the bureaucracy. One of Cheney’s favorite past times. This corruption disrupts existing informal communications and patronage networks. New ones are formed beholden to the new lords and bishops; these are open only to those who speak Norman French, not Anglo-Saxon.

Those opposed to the new overlords are instantly put in the worst light. Loyalty to the law, due process or rational allocation of resources are deemed insubordination, lying or obstruction. Normal vulnerabilities such as family commitments, debts or the need to avoid a cloud on the resume for a career dependent on security clearances, are manipulated to assure conformity.

Other than for the occasional Don Quixote, the least ethical, the most lazy or politically ambitious stay; their moral and careerist opposites go. That necrology corrupts the organization and cements in place all but the most obvious or infamous excesses.

All of which means that for a Democratic administration to succeed, it will take more than business as usual.

OK, you made my point better than I did. Bravo!!!! (LHP stands and claps)

They needn’t lead to convictions: in an administration led almost exclusively by PR flacks, it is the headlines that count.

Bingo! Give that man a gold star

Another lethal outcome is corruption of the bureaucracy. One of Cheney’s favorite past times. This corruption disrupts existing informal communications and patronage networks. New ones are formed beholden to the new lords and bishops; these are open only to those who speak Norman French, not Anglo-Saxon.

Those opposed to the new overlords are instantly put in the worst light. Loyalty to the law, due process or rational allocation of resources are deemed insubordination, lying or obstruction. Normal vulnerabilities such as family commitments, debts or the need to avoid a cloud on the resume for a career dependent on security clearances, are manipulated to assure conformity.

Other than for the occasional Don Quixote, the least ethical, the most lazy or politically ambitious stay; their moral and careerist opposites go. That necrology corrupts the organization and cements in place all but the most obvious or infamous excesses.

All of which means that for a Democratic administration to succeed, it will take more than business as usual.

Even the “wins” have often been losses for those who respect the law. And the losses on some of these cases haven’t been just legal losses, but diplomatic and world prestige losses as well. Since when do you actually trot into court and say that it is a crime to give money to hospitals bc they also treat terrorists suspects? We have govt policies that are making life excruciating for the people throughout the ME and on top of that take the best PR sales points groups like Hezbollah and Hamas have (providing humanitarian support to some of the people afflicted) and stand up and say we will go after anyone who involves themselves or their organization in humanitarian efforts, if those also mean someone in the Hamas party (and just how big is it, btw) gets a bandaid?

Stupid.

Flat stupid on so many different fronts. Obviously, groups that are laundering fronts need to be addressed on that basis, but if you can’t and you go ahead and bring a case anyway on those kinds of grounds, you lose a lot more than just that case.

And a case like Fitzgerald’s own Salah case gets pushed for its own reasons. It was by and large a loss, and yet, tactically, it set the precedent stage bc it allowed in coerced and possibly tortured confessions with only a masked and cloaked attribution “source” Gee, I wonder (GITMO) when and how (GITMO) we might need (GITMO) case law support (GITMO) for being able to introduce (GITMO) torture confessions (GITMO) from only cloaked (GITMO) identity (GITMO) sources?

And the winners? Like the “Ninjas in the basment” California case? *sigh*

So far, the USAs have willingly lined up to argue against rights to an attorney (Clement and Comey pushing Mukasey until he said their arguments were ridiculous) and to argue that a defendant couldn’t review his own statements given in interrogation bc they were “classified” and the defendant wasn’t security cleared to hear his own words; they’ve cooked up unfounded arguments to block or invade attorney client exchanges; they’ve argued, in the plane case, the existence of classified laws where the defendant and judges even could not know what they law was (it’s classified) but would just have to take the work of the USA’s office that the classified law existed and was broken; etc. etc. etc.

It’s not just a matter of the institution rotting because of decisions made at the head – - it’s a matter of those within the institution choosing putrification and to rot their souls over stepping away and refusing to be a part of the decay.

But however we got there, we are there. Reading Scott Horton on the “bama” prosecutions gives you an affintiy for bulemics.