Religion is the New Black
Or so says the Justice Department anyway.
In recent years, the Bush administration has recast the federal governments role in civil rights by aggressively pursuing religion-oriented cases while significantly diminishing its involvement in the traditional area of race.
Paralleling concerns of many conservative groups, the Justice Department has successfully argued in a number of cases that government agencies, employers or private organizations have improperly suppressed religious expression in situations that the Constitutions drafters did not mean to restrict.
The shift at the Justice Department has significantly altered the governments civil rights mission, said Brian K. Landsberg, a law professor at the University of the Pacific and a former Justice Department lawyer under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
Not until recently has anyone in the department considered religious discrimination such a high priority, Professor Landsberg said. No one had ever considered it to be of the same magnitude as race or national origin.
Well, whats the problem with that, really? The Free Exercise of religion is protected in the First Amendment, after all. Its one of the bedrock principles of this countrys founding. Whats the big deal if the Bush Administ
er, Justice Department wants to focus on ensuring that pillar of American liberty?
Well, it could be because theyre promoting one aspect of the First Amendment (the Free Exercise Clause) at the expense of another (that thing about the Establishment)
The changes are evident in a variety of actions:
Intervening in federal court cases on behalf of religion-based groups like the Salvation Army that assert they have the right to discriminate in hiring in favor of people who share their beliefs even though they are running charitable programs with federal money.
Supporting groups that want to send home religious literature with schoolchildren; in one case, the government helped win the right of a group in Massachusetts to distribute candy canes as part of a religious message that the red stripes represented the blood of Christ.
Vigorously enforcing a law enacted by Congress in 2000 that allows churches and other places of worship to be free of some local zoning restrictions. The division has brought more than two dozen lawsuits on behalf of churches, synagogues and mosques.
Herein lies the problem of prosecutorial discretion. The Justice Department, like all government agencies, does not posses unlimited resources. Thus, it must chose its battles carefully and attempt to maximize the effect on the greater good. While they cant take on every case for purely economic reasons, once the Justice Department makes its determination that they intervene in a case, they bring the full weight of the federal government with them.
So it could be a bit of a problem when that weight is being used to ensure that students may proselytize on high school grounds or allow religious organizations to circumvent civil rights laws.
Possibly more problematic is the DoJs notoriously shitty hiring practices. According to the New York Times:
Along with its changed civil rights mission, the department has also tried to overhaul the roster of government lawyers who deal with civil rights. The agency has transferred or demoted some experienced civil rights litigators while bringing in lawyers, including graduates of religious-affiliated law schools and some people vocal about their faith, who favor the new priorities. That has created some unease, with some career lawyers disdainfully referring to the newcomers as holy hires.
Nothing wrong with a little Nepotism in the Name of The Lord, eh? Especially when those hires come from such top-flight law schools as Catholic University (Tier 2, according to the U.S. News and World Report Law School Rankings), Regent University (Tier 4), and legal powerhouse Ave Maria School of Law (Tier 4).
[Former Civil Rights Prosecutor Rigel] Oliveri recalled that when she was hired in 2000 by the Justice Department, she was impressed by the accomplishments of her peers. But once the political appointees controlled the hiring, she said, The change in the quality of people who were chosen was very pronounced.
When the front office sent around the résumés of those newly hired for the honors program, she said, It was obvious what they had: conservative and religious bona fides.
The DoJ justifies these policies by citing constitutional and congressional mandates.
[Cynthia] Magnuson, the Justice Department spokeswoman, said it was justified in devoting so much attention to the issue because Congress has demonstrated its interest by including religion in the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and enacting the 2000 law involving zoning restrictions, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.
Ms. Magnuson also said the department had not diminished its interest in enforcing racial and national origin discrimination cases. The changes at the Justice Department began under Attorney General John Ashcroft, but have accelerated under Alberto R. Gonzales, his successor.
Mr. Gonzales has increasingly cited his agencys record on behalf of religious causes as among his most important accomplishments, often noting the successful intervention in cases on behalf of people who had suffered discrimination for wearing Muslim head coverings. In speeches, he routinely says that religious freedom is the nations first freedom because our founders saw fit to place it first in the Bill of Rights.
Last I checked, the First Amendment actually placed a restriction against mingling religion with the state first. But what do I know? Im just a first-year attorney, not the nations most powerful law-enforcement official.
Still, the question remains: Why is this a problem?
At the same time, the department has sharply reduced its efforts to combat voting rights plans that may dilute black electoral strength.
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Joseph D. Rich, who recently stepped down as head of the voting rights section after a 37-year career at Justice, said that only the federal government had the resources to bring voting dilution cases, while private groups have been able to bring the language cases. The civil rights division also brought the first case ever on behalf of white voters, alleging in 2005 that a black political leader in Noxubee County, Miss., was intimidating whites at the polls.
The shift in priorities at the criminal section of the civil rights division has been especially stark. The criminal section which previously had mostly focused on hate crimes or lawsuits against police officers who may have violated someones civil rights began taking on human trafficking cases that had previously been handled elsewhere.
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Pursuing trafficking cases, rather than those involving hate crimes or police abuse, was seen as important to moving ahead in the department, current and former career officials said. They added that political appointees in supervisory positions frequently vetoed proposed hate crime investigations or questioned them to death.
You only needed for that to happen a few times and people got the message they shouldnt be eager to send up such cases, said one lawyer who would talk only on condition of anonymity.
Thank goodness Republicans blocked a no-confidence vote for Gonzales on Monday. Hes clearly doing a bang-up job all-around.
Bush Administration Even Sucks at Torture
Remember the controversy back in 2004-2005 about then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales big hard on for the use of torture when dealing with the detainees at Guantanamo Bay? Remember how he wrote memos arguing that the Geneva convention does not apply to the detainees and Gitmo and thus it was alright to torture the everloving heck out of them to elicit information? Remember how Bushs cronies in the White House and the DoJ all signed off on this plan despite opposition from the State Department and Colon Powell?
Well, turns out that theyre not only sadistic bastards with a faulty grasp on international law, but they are also totally shit when it comes to torturing people.
As the Bush administration completes secret new rules governing interrogations, a group of experts advising the intelligence agencies are arguing that the harsh techniques used since the 2001 terrorist attacks are outmoded, amateurish and unreliable.
The psychologists and other specialists, commissioned by the Intelligence Science Board, make the case that more than five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has yet to create an elite corps of interrogators trained to glean secrets from terrorism suspects.
While billions are spent each year to upgrade satellites and other high-tech spy machinery, the experts say, interrogation methods possibly the most important source of information on groups like Al Qaeda are a hodgepodge that date from the 1950s, or are modeled on old Soviet practices.
"Soviet practices"? Classy. Apparently, in Soviet Russia water boards you!
Anyway, these so-called scientists and experts base these findings not only on long-standing principles of international law and morality, but on the notion that (despite the bill of goods that Jack Bauer is selling you,) torture just flat doesnt work. Especially ineffective are the types of torture weve been using in Gitmo and around the world for the past five years.
In meetings with intelligence officials and in a 325-page initial report completed in December, the researchers have pressed a more practical critique: there is little evidence, they say, that harsh methods produce the best intelligence.
Theres an assumption that often passes for common sense that the more pain imposed on someone, the more likely they are to comply, said Randy Borum, a psychologist at the University of South Florida who, like several of the studys contributors, is a consultant for the Defense Department.
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[S]ome of the experts involved in the interrogation review, called Educing Information, say that during World War II, German and Japanese prisoners were effectively questioned without coercion.
It far outclassed what weve done, said Steven M. Kleinman, a former Air Force interrogator and trainer, who has studied the World War II program of interrogating Germans. The questioners at Fort Hunt, Va., had graduate degrees in law and philosophy, spoke the language flawlessly, and prepared for four to six hours for each hour of questioning, said Mr. Kleinman, who wrote two chapters for the December report.
Mr. Kleinman, who worked as an interrogator in Iraq in 2003, called the post-Sept. 11 efforts amateurish by comparison to the World War II program, with inexperienced interrogators who worked through interpreters and had little familiarity with the prisoners culture.
The Bush Administration eschewing proven, researched methods of international relations in favor of half-cocked aggression? Quelle Surprise!
These were not the only broadsides the Bushies took from experts in regards to the administrations torture policy. Other swipes included one at the vast amount of resources that were directed at justification of the policy rather than creating one with an acceptable level of efficacy.
Robert F. Coulam, a research professor and attorney at Simmons College and a study participant, said that the governments most vigorous work on interrogation to date has been in seeking legal justifications for harsh tactics. Even today, he said, theres nothing like the mobilization of effort and political energy that was put into relaxing the rules governing interrogation.
The White Houses counter to this avalanche of rebukes is essentially we didnt torture anyone, and if we did it wasnt really that tortur-riffic. While this explanation flies in the face of the clear weight of the evidence showing excessively harsh treatment is common in Gitmo, I do give them some credit for at least attempting to make an argument that their tactics were legal beforehand. Its a morbidly refreshing change from just brazenly breaking the law and then clumsily attempting to justify it later as was the case with the domestic spying situation.
Still, it is worth noting that Bush is in the process of finalizing a long-overdue executive order that would officially outlaw some of the more controversial techniques like waterboarding. On the other hand, the order is expected to authorize several techniques that, according to the New York Times piece, go beyond those allowed in the military by the Army Field Manual. One is forced to wonder whether the advice and critiques offered by this panel of experts will be reflected in the Administrations new torture policies. Well have to wait to find out, but knowing them I sincerely doubt it.
Finally, my personal favorite criticism of the way the White House came upon their interrogation policy comes from one if their own. In this case, a former aide to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.
In an April lecture, Philip D. Zelikow, the former adviser to Ms. Rice, said it was a grave mistake to delegate to attorneys decisions on the moral question of how prisoners should be treated.
Asking your lawyer about questions of morality is a grave mistake indeed. Especially if that lawyer is Alberto Gonzales.
Hat tip: Necia
Alberto Gonzales is One Classy Motherfucker
Welcome to the SuicideGirls Newswire, where our motto is All the Alberto thats Fit to Print™. Today's Alberto Gonzales story is another fun one. We all know that when hes not excusing torture and hiring unqualified crooks as assistants, Mr. Gonzales likes to work to ensure that the Constitution does not apply to the Executive Branch. Hey, everyones got to have a hobby.
But rest assured, dear readers, this habit of working to circumvent due process did not begin when he assumed the role of Attorney General in February of 2005. In fact, today we found out that its been something he was big into way back in the day. Heck, when he was just White House counsel, Alberto had to push then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to make sure his president got a chance to listen to your phone calls whenever he wanted. And push him he did. By any means necessary, in fact.
Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he refused to recertify the [warrantless wiretapping] program because Attorney General John Ashcroft had reservations about its legality just before falling ill with pancreatitis in March 2004.
The White House, Comey said, recertified the program without the Justice Department's signoff, allowing it to operate for about three weeks without concurrence on whether it was legal. Comey, Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller and other Justice Department officials at one point considered resigning, Comey said.
"I couldn't stay, if the administration was going to engage in conduct that the Department of Justice had said had no legal basis," Comey told the panel.
When youre out-douching John Ashcroft, you know you're reaching truly historic levels of douche-ousity.
Naturally, the story gets even more appalling. Prior to Ashcrofts hospitalization, he had refused to sign off on Bushs domestic wiretapping plan. I dont know for sure, but one can only guess that his refusal had something to do with the fact that White Houses program was blatantly fucking illegal. Just a guess. Of course, that didnt stop Gonzales, who stooped even lower than I thought possible. Alberto showed up on Ashcroft's sick bed to strong-arm him into giving the go ahead.
The dramatic hospital confrontation involved Comey, the acting attorney general during Ashcroft's absence, and a White House team that included Bush's then-counsel, Alberto Gonzales, and White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, Comey said. Gonzales later succeeded Ashcroft as attorney general.
Senior government officials had expressed concerns about whether the National Security Agency, which administered the warrantless eavesdropping program, had the proper oversight in place. Other concerns included whether any president possessed the legal and constitutional authority to authorize the program as it operated at the time.
Comey testified Tuesday that when he refused to certify the program, Gonzales and Card headed to Ashcroft's sick bed in the intensive care unit at George Washington University Hospital.
When Gonzales appealed to Ashcroft, the ailing attorney general lifted his head off the pillow and in straightforward terms described his views of the program, Comey said. Then he pointed out that Comey, not Ashcroft, held the powers of the attorney general at that moment.
Gonzales and Card then left the hospital room, Comey said.
Nothing classier than hounding a sick man for permission to wipe your ass with the Fourth Amendment. A few months after Gonzales got the certification he needed from the Justice Department to continue the illegal spying program, Comey and Ashcroft resigned, leaving the AG position open for Gonzales.
This bears repeating: John Ashcroft, the same bigoted, insane, fearmongering singer/songwriter who was perfectly willing to brush aside habeas corpus protections for the terrorists at Gitmo, resigned in part because the White House and Alberto Gonzales were even more dismissive of the Constitution than he was. Incredible.
Comeys testimony comes on the same day that Gonzales officially threw his former right-hand-man under the bus in an attempt to douse the waning flames of the attorney firing scandal. On Monday, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty fell on his sword. On Tuesday, Gonzales gleefully buried his fall guy.
Resigned Justice Department deputy Paul McNulty occupied "a very central place" at the agency, according to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. At the National Press Club, Gonzales said it was McNulty's suggestions on which U.S. attorneys to dismiss that mattered most to him.
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"The one person that I would care about would be the views of the deputy attorney general, because the deputy attorney general is the direct supervisor of the United States attorneys," Gonzales said.
"And in this particular case, Mr. McNulty was a former colleague of all of these United States attorneys, and so he would probably know better than anyone else about the performance and the qualifications of these of our United States attorney community."
Jesus Christ, he's such a dick. Of course, hes also a fucking liar.
McNulty has acknowledged approving, last October, the list of prosecutors who were ordered to leave. But documents released by the Justice Department show he was not closely involved in picking all the U.S. attorneys who were put on the list a job mostly driven by two Gonzales staffers with little prosecutorial experience.
Does Even Alberto Gonzales Hate Todd Goliath?
I know, I know, it sounds crazy, and I bet you're thinking Alberto Gonzales probably doesn't even know who Todd Goliath is, much less hate him! But tell me, what other explanation can there be for the Attorney General, along with the rest of our fine Justice Department, suddenly up and vowing to crack down harder than ever on nefarious intellectual property bandits?
The Justice Department is pledging to get even tougher on copyright violators and other intellectual property thieves, saying it has already boosted convictions and lengthened prison sentences.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Monday he was sending a bill to Congress--the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007--that would toughen penalties for repeat offenders. He also said he would "hit criminals in their wallets" by boosting restitution and ensuring all ill-gotten gains are forfeited, as well as any property used to commit the crimes.
Wow, that's harsh! Even so, I can't think of anyone whose wallet I'd rather hit right now (and by wallet, I mean groin) than Goliath. Dude needs to be smacked upside the head with that Intellectual Property Protection Act but good. I'm not so sure about a prison sentence, though. The proliferation of his "art" is annoying on a Thomas Kincade level, and his level of success is insulting to real struggling talent, but I'm not sure it's really enough to be punishable by a prison stay.
Come to think of it, I'm really actually kind of surprised that, given our current administration's penchant for laissez-faire economics, the attorney general would be so bloodthirsty for Goliath, who basically said, "Screw everyone else, whatever it takes to make me a millionaire." One would think they would, if anything, hold him up as a shining beacon of intrepid entrepreneurship.
But, wait a second. This is about that kind of intellectual property theft, isn't it? This isn't just another way to chip away at the same tired old Viacom hates YouTube problem again, is it? Because if all "tougher on intellectual property thieves" means is "suing people who upload clips of Kids in the Hall and making it so that I can't post the 'Girl Drink Drunk' sketch on an internet message board because it won't be making certain people more money that way," I am going to be very angry indeed.
TV and film piracy has been a big issue in the conversion to digital, with Justice pledging to boost the number of attorneys trained to prosecute intellectual property (IP) crimes and to encourage more international cooperation in investigations.
Universal Chairman Bob Wright has argued that getting a handle on that piracy is not only critical to the digital TV conversion, but the whole U.S. and even global economy.
"These crimes, as we all know, also have a direct impact on our economy, costing victims millions of dollars and, if left unchecked, diminishing entrepreneurship," Gonzales said in announcing the bill.
Oh, god damn it!
Why Wasnt Steven Biskupic Fired With the Other US Attorneys?
Steven Biskupic is a US Attorney in the state of Wisconsin. During the 2006 Wisconsin Governors campaign, one of the dastardly criminals he convicted was used to attempt to smear Democrat (and eventual winner) Jim Doyle. That horrible convicts name was Georgia Thompson. Ms. Thompson was a civil servant at the state purchasing office. She allegedly used her influence to award a state travel contract to a firm whose CEO made several large donations to Doyles campaign. Her story was used in attack ads paid for by his Republican opponents campaign. Here is one of those ads.
Sounds pretty shady, huh? Well, theres just one problem: Georgia Thompsons conviction was total fucking bullshit, legally speaking.
Federal judges Thursday ruled that former state purchasing supervisor Georgia L. Thompson was wrongly convicted of making sure a state travel contract went to a firm linked to Gov. Jim Doyle's re-election campaign and freed her from an Illinois prison.
The three-judge panel in Chicago acted with unusual speed, ruling after oral arguments by Thompson's attorney and the U.S. attorney's office.
During 26 minutes of oral arguments, all three judges assailed the government's case, with Judge Diane Wood saying at one point that "the evidence is beyond thin."
During a news conference later Thursday, Doyle, a former state attorney general, said the three judges did an "extraordinary thing" by entering an order finding Thompson innocent and ordering her immediate release.
Decisions at that level of the federal judicial system usually take weeks or months after oral arguments.
Let me repeat that. The evidence that Mr. Biskupic based his prosecution on was so beyond thin that an appeals court made the decision to release the woman directly after oral arguments. The situation has caused the New York Times Adam Cohen (among many, many others) to inquire as to why Thompson was prosecuted in the first place.
To charge her, Mr. Biskupic had to look past a mountain of evidence of innocence. Ms. Thompson was not a Doyle partisan. She was a civil servant, hired by a Republican governor, with no identifiable interest in politics. She was only one member of a seven-person committee that evaluated the bidders. She was not even aware of the Adelman campaign contributions. She also had a good explanation for her choice: of the 10 travel agencies that competed, Adelman submitted the lowest-cost bid.
While Ms. Thompson did her job conscientiously, that is less clear of Mr. Biskupic. The decision to award the contract the supposed crime occurred in Madison, in the jurisdiction of Wisconsins other United States attorney. But for reasons that are hard to understand, the Milwaukee-based Mr. Biskupic swept in and took the case.
While he was investigating, in the fall of 2005, Mr. Biskupic informed the media. Justice Department guidelines say federal prosecutors can publicly discuss investigations before an indictment only under extraordinary circumstances. This case hardly met that test.
So what the fuck is going on here? Why is Biskupic being such a cock to this poor woman?
The prosecution proceeded on a schedule that worked out perfectly for the Republican candidate for governor. Mr. Biskupic announced Ms. Thompsons indictment in January 2006. She went to trial that summer, and was sentenced in late September, weeks before the election.
How very convenient for them! And how unusual that a member of the Justice Department would be manipulating their office to score cheap political points! Gee, who woulda thunk it?
But really, whats the big deal? I mean, sure this poor woman lost her job, her house, her good name and spent four months in jail, but in the long run Doyle won. No harm no foul, right? And what does this have to do with the Attorney firing scandal?
Most of the eight dismissed prosecutors came from swing states, and Democrats suspect they may have been purged to make room for prosecutors who would help Republicans win close elections. If so, it might also mean that United States attorneys in all swing states were under unusual pressure.
Wisconsin may be the closest swing state of all. President Bush lost it in 2004 by about 12,000 votes, and in 2000, by about half that. According to some Wisconsin politicians, Karl Rove said that their state was his highest priority among governors races in 2006, because he believed a Republican governor could help the party win Wisconsin in the 2008 presidential election.
Under normal circumstances Id say this kind of broad conspiracy theory is a bit unlikely. These, however, are not normal circumstances. It is beyond clear that the Justice Department has been overrun by political hacks and appointed Bushies. They have been appointed not to fight for Justice or defend the Constitution, but to push a bitter political agenda.
They should be ashamed of themselves, and we should be ashamed of our Justice Department.
Bush Administration Accidentally Loses Potentially Incriminating E-mails
Could these people be any more transparent? Does anyone buy this garbage anymore?
Of the 1,000 White House officials with political duties, 22 including Karl Rove, the chief political strategist have Republican National Committee accounts that are supposed to be used only for campaign-related work. But recent revelations that some officials have used those accounts for Bush administration business, including discussions of a plan to dismiss United States attorneys, has prompted a Congressional investigation.
On Wednesday, Scott Stanzel, deputy White House press secretary, said the administration had recently begun its own inquiry, and had concluded that its policy governing political e-mail accounts was unclear, that the White House was not aggressive enough in monitoring political e-mail and that some people who had the accounts did not follow the policy closely enough.
As a result, Mr. Stanzel said, some official e-mails have potentially been lost. He said Mr. Bush had told the White House counsels office to do everything practical to retrieve potentially lost messages.
Yes. Im sure theyll really bust their asses to get back those e-mails that could further point to their own wrongdoing. For reals!
While the Bushies are swearing up and down that if any communications were lost they wouldnt be of any value to the percolating Congressional investigation into the politically motivated firings of eight US Attorneys, they cant escape the evidence that shows them using their RNC e-mails inappropriately.
The flap grows out of the investigation into the dismissals of the prosecutors. E-mail messages provided to Congress in that inquiry showed that Scott Jennings, a deputy political director for Mr. Bush, used his national committee address, ending in gwb43.com, to discuss them with aides to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, including D. Kyle Sampson, who resigned amid the ensuing uproar.
In January, an assistant to Mr. Jennings used a gwb43.com account to circulate a document discussing Democrats who are being singled out for defeat in 2008. Please do not e-mail this out or let people see it, the e-mail read, adding, It is a close hold, and were not supposed to be e-mailing it around.
Other messages have brought scrutiny as well, including exchanges between Susan Ralston, a former assistant to Mr. Rove, and Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist convicted of corruption charges.
I know what youre thinking. So? They got some e-mails mixed up. Big fucking deal, right? Sure. They just mixed up a few e-mails and oops some got lost. That may be true, but even if no e-mails regarding the firing scandal were lost, their actions are nevertheless potentially illegal.
At issue is how the White House complies with two seemingly competing laws. One is the 1978 Presidential Records Act, which requires the administration to ensure that its decisions and deliberations are adequately documented and that records flowing out of those decisions are preserved.
The other is the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal officials from engaging in political business on government time.
Administration officials argue that they should be excused from these requirements because they are the first presidency in the age of instant communications. Of course, this is bullshit as plenty of people every day have no problem keeping business and personal e-mails separated into different accounts. Hell, I do it and Im the most disorganized person youve ever met. No, whats really going on here is that this administration is using this our bad excuse as a way to shirk their responsibilities, circumvent applicable regulations and avoid accountability. But what else is new?
I acknowledge that this story is not the worst you've heard about Bush and his cronies. Its certainly not lying to the country to go to war, criminally mismanaging a domestic natural disaster recovery effort or ignoring intelligence that suggested an attack on America was imminent. Those things were really bad. However, this is just another in a long, unbroken string of sad stories about an Executive Branch drunk on power and consumed by irresponsibility and incompetence.
Stay tuned for next week, when we do it all over again.
Alberto Gonzales Has Poor Hiring Skills
Alberto Gonzales couldnt manage his way out of a paper bag. In fact, his administrative abilities are so poor that the entirety of his staff seems to be either on their way out or incompetent or both. Were he the lead key at Jack In The Box, this would be bad. But Big Als the Attorney General of the United States and head of the Department of Justice. So it becomes a bit bigger issue.
First Alberto fired eight US Attorneys for political reasons. Then his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, resigned amidst the furor. Sampson then testified under oath that his boss was lying about the firings. Now comes a double human resources headache for Big Al.
First came the news that four Assistant US Attorneys in Minnesota took a voluntary demotion rather than work with one of his toadies.
Its a major shakeup at the offices of new U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose. Four of her top staff voluntarily demoted themselves Thursday, fed up with Paulose, who, after just months on the job, has earned a reputation for quoting Bible verses and dressing down underlings.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney John Marti is just one of the people dropping themselves in rank to simply a U.S. Attorney position. Also making the move are the heads of Pauloses criminal and civil divisions, James Lackner and Erica Mozangue, respectively. All three, according to a spokeswoman for Paulose, have "decided to go back to being prosecutors."
Reportedly, the office's top administrator, Tim Anderson, also has given up his management role.
The move is intended to send a message to Washington that 33-year-old Paulose is in over her head.
Well, we know how good the Bush Administration is at getting messages! Im sure theyll take the hint.
While Paulose has not yet been implicated directly in the firing scandal (yet), shes certainly got some strong connections to it.
She was a special assistant to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, worked as a senior counsel for deputy attorney general Paul McNulty and is best buds with Monica Goodling the assistant U.S. Attorney who recently took the Fifth rather than testify before Congress.
Which brings us to Fun Big Al Managerial Story #2 for the day. The aforementioned Goodling just resigned. Boy, does he know how to pick em!
Goodling was among the senior Justice Department officials who participated in meetings and e-mail exchanges about the planned dismissals. She went on paid leave as the controversy grew.
In a brief letter to Gonzales, Goodling gave no reason for her resignation but said it would be effective Saturday.
"I am hereby submitting my resignation to the Office of the Attorney General, effective April 7, 2007. It has been an honor to have served at the Department of Justice for the past five years," Goodling wrote.
"May God bless you richly as you continue your service to America," she wrote in the letter.
Yes, Alberto. May God bless you richly as you continue your shitty, shitty service to America. Amen.
2007 Constitutional Showdown!
The US attorneys purge scandal has been heating up for a while and now things are finally starting to get exciting. Today, the House Judiciary subcommittee on commercial and administrative law voted to subpoena Karl Rove, Harriet Miers and Attorney General Gonzales chief of staff, Kyle Sampson for their role in the firing of eight federal prosecutors. They will be asked to testify under oath about their actions.
The under oath part is what the White House is worried about. The administration is attempting to paint the scandal as a partisan attack, but their constant changing of reasons for the firings does little to help their argument. Yesterday, Bush offered a compromise: His aides would come to meet with Congress, behind closed doors and not under oath. Thats a really super compromise when you are being accused of criminal activity. He only pissed off Democratic and some Republican members of Congress. Next the Senate will vote for subpoenas.
The White House has strongly indicated they will claim executive privilege and not allow aides to testify.
Bush said Tuesday he worried that allowing testimony under oath would set a precedent on the separation of powers that would harm the presidency as an institution.
Uh huh. Well, Im not going to argue that, instead, Ill let White House Spokesman Tony Snow argue it for me. From the Chicago Tribune ten years ago, when Snow was upset that Clinton might not let his aides testify:
"Evidently, Mr. Clinton wants to shield virtually any communications that take place within the White House compound on the theory that all such talk contributes in some way, shape or form to the continuing success and harmony of an administration. Taken to its logical extreme, that position would make it impossible for citizens to hold a chief executive accountable for anything. He would have a constitutional right to cover up.
"One gets the impression that Team Clinton values its survival more than most people want justice and thus will delay without qualm. But as the clock ticks, the public's faith in Mr. Clinton will ebb away for a simple reason: Most of us want no part of a president who is cynical enough to use the majesty of his office to evade the one thing he is sworn to uphold the rule of law.''
Youre a good boy, Tony, thanks. The subpoena question will most likely go all the way to the Supreme Court, where the majority of justices are Republicans. But the Court has already been injured by their actions in the recount decision of 2000. The justices are supposed to be above partisan politics and the recount decision was along party lines. The Supreme Court lost credibility in the eyes of many Americans. Will it self-inflict more damage to save an unpopular president?
Before any ruling the subpoena fight will be in the media and Bush will lose. The incredibly unpopular administration is already known for lying and if it chooses to fight a battle over whether or not aides should swear under oath, which is just telling the truth, it will lose. Editorials are already popping up.
If Karl Rove plans to tell the truth, he has nothing to fear from being under oath like any other witness."
I dont want to have to tell the truth is not a good defense, but it is what the White House is going with. We can feel good about one thing during all this madness, Bush feels really bad for the folks who were unjustly fired under his watch.
Im sorry this, frankly, has bubbled to the surface the way it has, for the U.S. attorneys involved. I really am. These are I put them in there in the first place; theyre decent people. They serve at our pleasure. And yet, now theyre being held up into the scrutiny of all this, and its just what I said in my comments, I meant about them. I appreciated their service, and Im sorry that the situation has gotten to where its got. But thats Washington, D.C. for you. You know, theres a lot of politics in this town.
Oversights a bitch, huh? Welcome to America, Mr. President.
The Independent Bitch Slaps US Terrorist Arrests
On Thursday America breathed a sigh of relief as our government informed us that a terrorist organization related to Al-Qaeda had been taken down in Florida. My God were we lucky! These vile terrorists wanted to blow up our beloved Sear Tower that is probably in Chicago most of us think. US Attorney General, Alberto The Torturer Gonzales held a press conference to let the well-protected citizens know that we were now safe. He denounced an attempt to "wage war against America". Shudder.
Twenty-four hours later, reality started to emerge and it painted an entirely different picture. The seven young black men arrested in Miami and Atlanta had never been in touch with Al-Qaeda, and had no explosives. Their "plan" to destroy America's tallest building was actually more like hope. All they had really done was to tell an FBI informant that they wanted to blow some stuff up. The informant was posing as a member of Al-Qaeda. None of the seven arrested had ever been on a terrorist watch list. John Pistole, the bureau's deputy director, described the plan on Friday as "aspirational rather than operational.
In Mid-December the ringleader, Narseal Baptiste, met with the informant as asked for equipment including uniforms, machine guns, explosives, cars and $50,000 in cash for an Islamic Army that would carry out a mission similar to 9/11. We can be thankful it was an FBI informant because Al-Qaeda would most certainly have given money to an unemployed dude who has some friends with absolutely no training or know-how. Those words are pretty much the extent of this terrorist organization.
In truth, the terrorists were merely a few semi-unemployed men, most of them petty criminals, from Liberty City, a poor black Miami neighborhood. I did far more damage to that neighborhood in Grand Theft Auto than they could ever dream of. Even their religious leanings are in dispute. Neighbors say they were part of a group, called Seas of David that mixes Christian and Islamic elements.
Arresting people then exaggerating their capabilities and abilities is something at which the Bush administration excels. 401 people have been charged with "terrorism-related offences" since 9/11, of those 212 have been convicted and only a tiny number of these were true terrorists.
In 2002 John Ashcroft, called a press conference to announce the arrest of Jose Padilla, the so-called "dirty bomber" who was supposedly preparing an attack on Washington with a radioactive bomb. Padilla was stuck in a Navy brig without charge for over three years, and then transferred to a civilian prison just before a federal court judge was to rule that charges must be brought. He faces trial in Miami later this year on different, vague, terrorist charges. Members of a sleeper cell in Detroit had their convictions quashed in 2004 because prosecutors had manipulated evidence. In December 2005, the trial of Sami al-Arian, accused of links with Islamic Jihad terrorists, ended in embarrassment for the government when the Florida university professor was acquitted.
The biggest successes have nothing to do US law enforcement. Richard Reid, The shoe bomber was stopped by alert flight attendants in December 2001, while Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, the Virginia student serving a 30-year sentence for threatening to kill President George Bush, was caught by police in Saudi Arabia.
Thank you for saving us from the terrorists Mr. Bush.
Alberto Gonzales Making a Serious Run at #1 Asshole
Lets face it, Alberto Gonzales is a class A douchebag. You know it because sometimes when you click on a very hot young girls picture here on SG a photo of Gonzales comes up and your boner goes down. He has written a legal defense of Bushs torture policies, demanded Google give him access to Americans' internet search information and played a major role in the sans warrant wiretapping scandal. And now he is getting his filthy little hands into something we all care about so very deeply, the steroids scandal. Last month Gonzales subpoenaed reporters in an attempt to force them to reveal their source on steroids in baseball.
You know you are being an asshole when the former chief spokesman of Ashcroft calls going after reporters, "the most reckless abuse of power I have seen in years." Way to go, really conservative guy. The former spokesman is Mark Corallo, whose PR firm represents Karl Rove. Yes, a guy who represents Karl Rove thinks Gonzales is out of control. How fucked up is that?
Alberto is raging a war against the press. Heres just a few of the things he is up to.
The Chronicle reporters face jail time for not revealing sources on the steroid baseball story.
Gonzales is considering an indictment of the New York Times.
The FBI is tapping reporters phones.
The FBI is seeking 20 year-old classified documents from the estate of dead reporter Jack Anderson
The government is attempting to circumvent the First Amendment through an 89 year-old-law, The Espionage Act.
The best thing for a democracy is for the media to be scared into silence. I think Benjamin Franklin said that.
Georgetown Students Say No to Gonzales
Alberto Gonzales spoke to law students at Georgetown University yesterday and they showed him how much they liked him by by getting up from their seats and turning their backs to him.
On Tuesday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales appeared at Georgetown Law School to deliver an address defending the NSA domestic spy programs. During the course of his address, nearly 30 students stood up one-by-one and turned their back on Gonzales in protest. A panel of law professors addressed Gonzales speech, calling it illegal.
[...]
During Gonzales' speech, the protesting students stayed standing throughout the speech. Five students stood up and wore black hoods reminiscent of ones used at Abu Ghraib. The hooded students held a banner reading the words of Benjamin Franklin: Those who would sacrifice liberties in the name of security deserve neither. Third-year law student Devon Chaffee, said later, We believe that as law students, we must stand up for the rule of law over the creation of a culture of fear.
The Gonzales speech comes as part of a coordinated effort by the Bush administration to increase public support for the domestic surveillance program and to try to justify illegal, unauthorized surveillance of US citizens.
Gonzales Fills Some Very Small Shoes
New attorney general Alberto Gonzales signaled today that he will pursuing the administration's prior efforts to restrict civil liberties when he endorsed a renewal of the controversial and idiotic USA Patriot Act. Gonzales made some choice remarks in a press conference today sponsored by the conservative think tank the Hoover Institute in which he indicated that a renewal of the act is somehow the only way to safeguard America from the external threats of terrorism.
Making his first policy speech since his swearing-in three weeks ago, Gonzales told a conference sponsored by Stanford University's Hoover Institution that the USA Patriot Act, passed in 2001, "has helped prevent additional terrorist attacks" and that he shares Congress's goal of "giving law enforcement the tools they need to keep America safe while honoring our values."
It's not entirely clear how an act that has done little besides infuriate civil libertarians and (illegally) attempt to blur the lines between criminals and "enemy combatants" has helped to prevent additional terrorist attacks. Oh wait, maybe he's referring to the multitude of convictions that have since followed the 9/11 attacks? No, probably not, considering there haven't been any. However, his spokesman did wonders to clear things up about his statement.
Spokesman Kevin Madden amplified slightly after the speech, saying: "If there are movements to make these provisions that are designed to sunset better, then he would support that; but [Gonzales believes] allowing them to lapse would make America less safe." Madden said that any changes would have to "add to law enforcement's ability to crack down on terror."
Clearly he, and Mr. Gonzales, have been issued the top secret America-safe-o-meters that give constant status updates as to how safe the country is, and they're the only ones who are in the position to say that the Patriot Act is what is keeping America in the safe zone.
Honestly, is the administration ever going to give up on these sorts of scare tactics? There hasn't been a major piece of legislation passed since 9/11 that the administration supported that didn't somehow invoke the nebulous evil spectre of terrorism to intimidate and scare opponents into allowing it to pass. Hopefully our noble legislature has finally woken up and will refuse to be bullied and do the right thing; allow the Patriot Act to expire. I wouldn't count on it though.
Gonzales Confirmed, Democrats Present a (Mostly) United Front
Alberto Gonzales was confirmed as Attorney General Thursday by a final vote of 60-36. Six Democrats crossed over to vote for Gonzales. Many Republicans, and a few Democrats, used the occasion to revel in Gonzales's Algeresque story: A grandson of Mexican immigrants who rose to the position of Bush's top lawyer. Senator Mel Martinez (R-FL) marked the occasion with another first: He delivered part of his floor speech in Spanish, becoming the first Senator to speak a foreign language on the floor.
Democrats used the occasion to voice their displeasure with Gonzales's actions related to administration torture scandals.
"Mr. Gonzales was at the heart of the Bush administration's notorious decision to authorize our forces to commit flagrant acts of torture in the interrogation of detainees," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.
Congratulations to Mr. Gonzales, and to the Democratic Senators who used the opportunity to shine a light on administration abuses.