Monica Goodling and AUSA Hiring:
It will be interesting to see what this DOJ investigation turns up.
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Monica Goodling and AUSA Hiring:
It will be interesting to see what this DOJ investigation turns up.
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Possibly. Or perhaps they just want to get to the bottom of the matter. In either case, if she did nothing illegal, then she has nothing to worry about. And even if she did, she could always appeal and get it overturned on a technicality, and then start her own talk show, and then complain about criminals getting away on technicalities.
You know, like Oliver North did.
Getting into that office was incredibly hard. Chertoff brought with him the attitude you'd find in the SDNY and the EDNY. We loved the competition.
To read what this administration's done to DOJ, to let Monica Goodling make hiring decisions on AUSAs. It's so incredibly disheartening. I barely recognize the Justice Department.
And for what? Are these people really so naive to think that they can accomplish their goal of one party rule? And that this is somehow a *good* thing?
I'm as liberal as they come, but after having worked in the gov't for 15 years, I've learned that whatever party is in power, after a time it becomes time for change. You need to sweep away the deadwood and start fresh with new blood, whatever the party. Eight years of the Clinton Administration was almost as bad as eight years of Bush pere. (The former was even worse, but that was because we have 12 years of Republicans!)
So they went after the partisans with a vengeance, and then they think that everyone is supposed to treat them kindly? perhaps they should, of course, but still....
Try telling that to Libby. We're witnessing a concerted effort to take down the administration by insinuation. Every salvo has been based on eye-of-the-beholder style crimes backed by nothing more than eye-of-the-beholder evidence.
Er, you mean the person who deliberately lied about material facts? Libby was trying to obstruct an investigation. Not exactly the example of an innocent person.
Well, but this adminstration HAS done a lot to answer for, you must admit. Between the illegal torturing, eavesdropping, the politicizing of various departments and cabinets, this hasn't been a squeky clean place.
You're joking, right? Libby is your best example of an innocent person from the administration taken down by insinuation?
Whatever "eye of the beholder" evidence is, the jury in Scooter's case certainly beheld.
And now.... behold.
I haven't tried the experiment, but I'd assume that if you sent in, for a career job, a resume that mentioned your party affiliation, it would be the subject of a lot of merriment before it was crumpled and pitched into the wastecan.
Hmmm...let's see. Secret arrests, indefinite secret detentions, secret prisons, torture, admitted deliberate violations of FISA, secret trials with secret evidence, secret laws, secret watch lists for travel and the contention that the president has carte blanche to violate any and all laws because the words "commander in chief" appear in the constitution. Yeah, nothing to see here. At least nothing you are allowed to see.
Democracy depends on transparency. The electorate cannot make informed decisions without access to how our government works. Corruption and crime hide in the darkness of indefinitely justified secrecy which is anathema to a democratic state.
Real oversight and accountability are important to this country regardless of the party running the administration and the politicization of the AG office and of the USAs and the AUSAs is contrary to the very ideals of our country. I'm stunned by anyone who would defend such a practice.
We're talking young pups, with political clout rather than tactical skill, their egos puffed up by being elevated to heights of power at a young age.
So the answers are yes and yes.
I was in DC around age 30. Never got that much power, nor close to it, but more than a guy that young should have. Never got that far outa line, but did get a little big for my britches. So I can see where if you gave that load of power to someone that young and new to it, they could easily have gone far out of line. I mean, you're not too many years outa school, and now are assistant associate deputy attorney general, unless it was the other way around, with office in DC and help and people kowtowing and asking your approval.
Knew one Parks Service person -- we were at a reception when the Sec. of Interior entered, and well-dressed people from all over the room flocked to him. The persons said "just like flies 'round a fresh turd." By then I was in my 40s, and thought that if I was in power I'd make this guy my assistant. Because he would tell me when I was about to screw up, in the blunt language that no one could miss, when all the rest of those sycophants would be saying everything was perfect.
Fitzgerald is a Republican? I never knew what his politics were. I also have a bridge to sell you which you will need to cross the believability gap you create with your rationale for what the Democrats wanted.
Probably so. But what if any resume that did not have the Federalist Society on it also ended up in the trash? I think that is the more realistic scenario here.
Patrick Fitzgerald is a career Republican who, in 2004, the GOP tried to get to run for Senate (as a Republican) in Illinois (to replace, incidentally, GOP's PETER Fitzgerald).
CBS Reports
So honestly, I know the whole "GOP as Jesus, Democrats as Romans" thing is romantic to you, but eventually facts do matter. Bridge or no bridge.
I'll take a cheap shot. What administration roasted children in Texas because some lunatics where publically farting in their face?
You've set a new low for the "But Clinton did it" defense. I guess you can justify anything Bush could do (up to a botched ATF raid, I guess) because of Waco.
ex. "George Bush shot Ruth Ginsberg between the eyes? Wake me up when he's shot a man and his family at Ruby Ridge."
Sorry for the sarcasm guys. It's just one of those days, and I get tired of reading such inane comments from people who presumably should know a lot better.
Use immunity is an enforceable promise not to use (either directly, as evidence, or derivitively, to secure evidence) testimony given under the immunity against you.
Transactional immunity is basically a deal agreeing not to prosecute you (usually for a particular crime or set of crimes) in return for your testimony.
Under the relevant Supreme Court precedent, a grant of use immunity can overcome an attempt to invoke the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Transactional immunity is not required, though sometimes given for pragmatic reasons.
My hypothesis on all of this is that at some point Rove discovered that US Attorneys are very powerful and can influence public opinion and thus elections with their prosecutions (maybe after Rove himself was summoned before the grand jury, but probably well before then). So, Rove wanted to use the USAOs to secure the "permanent" Republican majority in Congress and among the states' governors. The DOJ staffers to Gonzo ---Sampson and Goodling--- either didn't know enough to know this was improper, or lacked the courage to tell Rove not to do this, or agreed with him, and set about implementing Rove's tactics at the DOJ. This is but the latest example.
Is it so hard to appoint qualified people and use THEM as pawns of the White House? Assuming it's the mastermind angle, that's all the White House would've needed to do.
The USA situation doesn't surprise me and doesn't seem isolated.
Involved? If you read the memos, it's much more than just "involved": Gonzales basically conceded all athority to Goodling, giving her carte blanche to hire and fire anybody at DOJ.
But you raise a good point: turning over full authority to "a youngish, 30-something with marginal credentials and no meaningful experience" is the whopper that's tough to swallow. Does anybody believe that she was acting completely on her own without orders from above? I can't.
The simplest explanation is that she was the conduit for orders from above and one of the orders was to make sure that nobody finds out who's really giving the orders. Meanwhile, the AG can disavow any knowlege of the whole sorrid mess. The official explanation (i.e. they gave full authority to a newbie) doesn't hold water.
Obviously not, since Kyle Sampson was a Chicago Law grad. But ask whoever hired John Dean to work for Nixon about how reliable a pawn good lawyers tend to be. Sampson had GOP bonafides from the Senate Judiciary committee and Orrin Hatch, so they knew he was 100% politically reliable. Such reliability cannot be counted on from most graduates of top law schools. Real lawyers might get it in their head that they want to enforce real law.
But a graduate of a fake law school founded by Pat Robertson would probably be expected to be more reliable than someone from, you know, a real law school. Goodling wasn't qualified to be a top DOJ officer, but she was more than qualified to be a pawn and political watercarrier.
By packing the U.S. Attorney's offices with people who seem to be loyalists, you're planning on shifting the balance in city council and legislative races around the country in 5 years, and in Congressional and statewide races in another 5 to 10 years.
Nick