Red State Renegade

How to get Alberto Gonzales and his cronies to testify under oath if they aren’t willing or will plead the fifth?

I say rendition them! Take them to Guantanamo, or, even better, Abu Ghraib prison:

Is that tasteless? Harsh? This could only be too good for the man who argued four months after 9-11 that the new War on Terror:

“renders obsolete [The Geneva Conventions’] strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.”

Good quote from a good article at The Hill about Karl Sampson’s testimony from yesterday:

“When we take the dress off the pig, today Kyle Sampson said Alberto Gonzales is a liar”

It’s killing me that I don’t have more time to write the play by play of the Attorney General going up in flames. Every time i check the news there are new, worse developments.

Alberto Gonzales is supposed to testify in mid-April but I bet he doesn’t last that long.

Today Kyle Sampson, former chief of Staff for AG Gonzales testified (voluntarily) to the Senate Judiciary Commission. He began with a disclaimer:

“I can’t pretend to know or remember every fact that may be of relevance,”

And then proceeded to use the phrase “I don’t remember” 122 times!

Even with the lapse of memory, he dug a deeper hole for his ex-boss. More to come…

John Mccain was on The Situatiom Room with Wolf Blitzer several days ago:

BLITZER: Here’s what you told Bill Bennett on his radio show on Monday:

“There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods today…The U.S. is beginning to succeed in Iraq.”

BLITZER: You know, everything we hear, that if you leave the so-called green zone, the international zone, and you go outside of that secure area, relatively speaking, you’re in trouble if you’re an American.

MCCAIN: You know, that’s why you ought to catch up on things, Wolf…General Petraeus goes out there almost every day in an unarmed Humvee…(blah blah blah)

BUT THE BEST PART CAME AFTER, as Wolf went live to Baghdad and Correspondent Michael Ware.

After verifying that Mr. Ware has been in Baghdad for four years now, this exchange occurred:

BLITZER: You’re walking around Baghdad on a daily basis..Has there been this improvement that Senator McCain is speaking about?

MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I’d certainly like to bring Senator McCain up to speed, if he ever gives me the opportunity. And if I have any difficulty hearing you right now, Wolf, that’s because of the helicopter circling overhead and the gun battle that is blazing just a few blocks down the road.

…None of the American generals here on the ground have anything like Senator McCain’s confidence.

…I mean, Senator McCain’s credibility now on Iraq, which has been so solid to this point, has now been left out hanging to dry.

…To suggest that there’s any neighborhood in this city where an American can walk freely is beyond ludicrous. I’d love Senator McCain to tell me where that neighborhood is and he and I can go for a stroll.

…And to think that General David Petraeus travels this city in an unarmed Humvee. I mean in the hour since Senator McCain has said this, I’ve spoken to some military sources and there was laughter down the line. I mean, certainly, the general travels in a Humvee. There’s multiple Humvees around it, heavily armed. There’s attack helicopters, predator drones, sniper teams, all sorts of layers of protection.

…So, no, Senator McCain is way off base on this one — Wolf.

The pic says it all:

TPM has a great post about Monica Goodling’s invocation of the fifth amendment and refusal to testify (see yesterday’s post here). Go there through the link above - their analysis says it all:

“…(Goodling) is afraid of indictment for perjury because she has to go up to Congress and testify under oath before the White House has decided what its story is”

No, this is NOT part of Monica Lewinsky’s resume!

This is one of the talking points spouted by the administration and the Department of Justice (and repeated verbatim by their parrots in the media) in defense of the firings of eight US Attorneys.

The argument is that since the president appoints these positions, it is completely OK for him to fire them. A related point (repeated at least as often) is that President Clinton fired ALL the US Attorneys, so why would the firing of eight be offensive or illegal?

The fact is: It is common for a new president to replace all or some of the US Attorneys at the beginning of his term - as normal as replacing his cabinet. Clinton did not set a precedent by doing this - in fact Reagan replaced them all as well. The important difference with what Bush and Alberto Gonzales (a man who never met a waterboard he didn’t like) did was twofold.

First, they did this after secretly changing the rules. As I wrote last month, they quietly slipped an un-noticed provision into the latest version of the (ironically named) Patriot act which nullified the requirement that the appointment of attorneys requires Senate confirmation, thereby enabling the White House to replace these positions permanently without oversight.

This week the house overwhelmingly passed a measure to undo this policy - yet the new Bushie Attorneys will remain.

Second, they did this well into the second term, as opposed to when first taking office. By this time things had started to go sour for the administration in terms of popularity, but more importantly, in terms of scandal. This suggests that they were trying to take control of a system that was plowing towards the Bushies in a series of corruption indictments on many fronts.

The idea that the attorneys ’serve at the pleasure of the president’ and therefore the sudden ousting of eight attorneys is perfectly normal is further turned on end by examining past precedent.

According to the Congressional Research Service, only ten US attorneys have been let go in the last twenty-five years other than at the beginning of a new president’s term of office. And of those ten, eight left for improper or criminal behavior (including one who bit the arm of a stripper in a night club).

According to their report:

“In virtually all of those 10 previous cases, serious issues of personal or professional conduct appeared to be the driving issue. Prior to December, for example, only two U.S. Attorneys were outright fired for improper, and in one case criminal, behavior. The CRS report identifies six other U.S. Attorneys who resigned during the 25-year period who were implicated in news reports of “questionable conduct.” For two others, the CRS was unable to determine the cause.”

According to the Congressional Register, on June 17, 1789, congress took up a debate on the phrase “to be removable by the president.” Specifically, the discussion centered on positions (including U.S. Attorneys) which were appointed by the president and confirmed by the senate, and whether the president or the Senate (or both) had the authority to remove such persons. They specifically addressed the possibility of such firings being done for political purposes.

Madison argued that the Senate was authorized to make these decisions without the agreement of the president:

“Perhaps the great danger, as has been observed, of abuse in the executive power, lies in the improper continuance of bad men in office. But the power we contend for will not enable him to do this; for if an unworthy man be continued in office by an unworthy president, the house of representatives can at any time impeach him, and the senate can remove him, whether the president chooses or not.”

On the contrary, Madison viewed it as dangerous that the president could make such decisions on his own - that such an act would be serious enough to be grounds for impeachment by the people.

“The danger then consists merely in this, the president can displace from office a man whose merits require that he should be continued in it. What will be the motives which the president can feel for such abuse of his power, and the restraints that operate to prevent it? In the first place, he will be impeachable by this house, before the senate, for such an act of mal-administration; for I contend that the wanton removal of meritorious officers would subject him to impeachment and removal from his own high trust.”

As we hear so often these days, the Constitution stated that a president could be impeached for ‘High crimes and misdemeanors.’

Interestingly enough, at the time of this debate, there were no federal crimes yet (the first federal crime was defined a year later) - so they were in the process defining impeachable crimes at the very moment this debate was occurring.

I’ve been too busy to write much lately, but I’ve been following every bit of the Attorney purge scandal with great anticipation and glee.

From the beginning I thought this had the early signs of another watergate, and as it progresses, I am more convinced that at least Gonzales will be going…And if all goes just right, it could truly affect the highest levels of the administration.

Let’s recap just a few items:

They said that The White House wasn’t involved…then they said Alberto Gonzales wasn’t involved. Now a trail connects not just Alberto (justifier of torture) and George the Boy King, but Karl Rove and White House Counsel Harriet Miers as well!

They said they would never remove US attorneys for partisan reasons…Now it’s proven to be just the opposite - Attorneys were removed specifically for not being “Bushies” (actual word used!).

Other recent developments:

News broke today that Monica Goodling, Gonzales top aid and liaison to the White House, subpoenaed by the Senate last week, would plead the fifth so as not to risk being ’scootered.’

She is more than just a ’staffer’ - she’s a full-fledged lawyer herself. And now she’s a lawyer with a lawyer!

There is no doubt she knows a lot, and could be the key to unraveling the truth behind the purge. It’s likely she will be forced to at least appear before the senate judicial committee (first question: ‘Were you instructed by the adminstration or any of your bosses to plead the fifth?’).

The best scenario would be for her to accept a plea of immunity to roll on her bosses…stay tuned.

At the very least the evidence suggests the firings were due to differences in ideology. But it’s likely they had more to do with various investigations getting too close to ‘home’ for many republicans. And some have suggested that the move was related to trying to steal the 2008 elections…

The N.Y. Times finally gets some balls!

The following are excerpts from today’s editorial about the White House offer to allow interviews with top officials (including Karl Rove) instead of testifying properly under oath in the attorney purge scandal.

The times slammed Bush’s speech from yesterday, in which he claimed the democrats were more interested in scoring political points than uncovering the truth, then went on to deny that the Bushies should testify properly:

“In nasty and bumbling comments made at the White House yesterday, President Bush declared that ‘people just need to hear the truth’ about the firing of eight United States attorneys…That’s right. Unfortunately, the deal Mr. Bush offered Congress to make White House officials available for ‘interviews’ did not come close to meeting that standard.”

“Mr. Bush’s proposal was a formula for hiding the truth, and for protecting the president and his staff from a legitimate inquiry by Congress. Mr. Bush’s idea of openness involved sending White House officials to Congress to answer questions in private, without taking any oath, making a transcript or allowing any follow-up appearances. The people, in other words, would be kept in the dark.”

“Congress has the right and the duty to fully investigate the firings, which may have been illegal, and Justice Department officials’ statements to Congress, which may have been untrue.”

“…No great surprise that top officials of this administration believe they do not need to testify before Congress,” since “this is an administration that has shown over and over that it does not believe that the laws apply to it, and that it does not respect its co-equal branches of government.”

“The White House notes that making misrepresentations to Congress is illegal, even if no oath is taken. But that seems to be where the lack of a transcript comes in. It would be hard to prove what Mr. Rove and others said if no official record existed..Mr. Bush’s overall strategy seems clear: to stop Congress from learning what went on within the White House, which may well be where the key decisions to fire the attorneys were made.”