It's a dot. One in a long line.

Mr. Rove (when Bush told the nation that any leakers in the WH would be fired), had his duties re-assigned to focus on the '08 elections and regaining majorities.

With other political plum operatives layered six deep in any department you look at, directing and influencing the career people to carry out the "administration policy", is it really that hard to connect the easing out of USA's for more "policy loyalists" to the impending needs of the Rove legacy?

If Karl can't get them back in the majority, he's a failure. Period.

It will take all means of tricks this time and Mr. Rove's magic hat is nearing the bottom. So what's a little obstruction, a few phony voter fraud cases and Dem DirtDigging among friends?

These guys eat their dead, and if they don't have any dead, they'll kill a few. Democrats still underestimate the nature of this coup....

Alphonse ( Al ) Kada
Iranians are fighting the Americans in Iraq so they don't have to fight them on the streets of Tehran

Kagro X nailed this over at DKos.

Who is largely responsible for enforcing congressional subpoenas? DOJ. Stack DOJ with your boys and Congress gets to have the pleasure of conducting trials themselves to get the information they want or watching DOJ ignore their orders.

Seems like a pretty good explanation to me.

Well, all three.

But I note that this is a vengeance-based administration.

These people live for payback. They treasure every imagined or real slight, and they go for it. Don't imagine that Plame was anything but payback. They've got their hatred going.

What was the U.S. Attorney Purge Meant to Achieve?

Wrong question.

See Adam Cohen's recent essay, It Wasn’t Just a Bad Idea. It May Have Been Against the Law for the Times.

Cohen:

[T]he administration has been strangely successful in pushing its message that the scandal is at worst a political misdeed, not a criminal matter.

It is true, as the White House keeps saying, that United States attorneys serve “at the pleasure of the president,” which means he can dismiss them whenever he wants. But if the attorneys were fired to interfere with a valid prosecution, or to punish them for not misusing their offices, that may well have been illegal.

Some crimes that a special prosecutor might one day look at:

1. Misrepresentations to Congress. The relevant provision, 18 U.S.C. § 1505, is very broad. It is illegal to lie to Congress, and also to “impede” it in getting information...Convictions of this kind are not common, but they happen. Just ask former White House aide David Safavian, who was convicted last year of making false statements to a Senate committee.

2. Calling the Prosecutors. As part of the Sarbanes-Oxley reforms, Congress passed an extremely broad obstruction of justice provision, 18 U.S.C. § 1512 (c), which applies to anyone who corruptly “obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so,” including U.S. attorney investigations...

3. Witness Tampering. 18 U.S.C. § 1512 (b) makes it illegal to intimidate Congressional witnesses. Michael Elston, Mr. McNulty’s chief of staff, contacted one of the fired attorneys, H. E. Cummins, and suggested, according to Mr. Cummins, that if he kept speaking out, there would be retaliation. Mr. Cummins took the call as a threat, and sent an e-mail message to other fired prosecutors warning them of it. Several of them told Congress that if Mr. Elston had placed a similar call to one of their witnesses in a criminal case, they would have opened an investigation of it...

4. Firing the Attorneys. United States attorneys can be fired whenever a president wants, but not, as § 1512 (c) puts it, to corruptly obstruct, influence, or impede an official proceeding... Anyone involved in firing a United States attorney to obstruct or influence an official proceeding could have broken the law.

Also Marty Lederman at Jack Balkin's blog, Did Anyone in the White House Act Unlawfully?:

Lederman:

Carvin [ Michael Carvin, deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel under Reagan] claims that there's no evidence of such wrongdoing in this case. And others have argued that because under current law the President can remove U.S. Attorneys for virtually any reason, there's really nothing to investigate here.

Is that right?

If there was any crime committed here, it was probably the "corrupt" influencing of a government proceeding. See 18 U.S.C. 1505 ("Whoever corruptly . . . influences, obstructs, or impedes or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede the due and proper administration of the law under which any pending proceeding is being had before any department or agency of the United States, . . . Shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years"); and 18 U.S.C. 1512(c)(2) ("Whoever corruptly . . . obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.")

If, say, Karl Rove, or Harriet Miers, or someone else in the White House, tried to pressure the U.S. Attorneys to drop investigations because the targets (e.g., Duke Cunningham) were Republicans, or to press certain investigations or prosectutions because the targets were Democrats (e.g., pressure to bring "vote fraud" cases regardless of whether there was any evidence of such fraud), that would arguably be an attempt to "corruptly" influence official proceedings -- to bring improper influences to bear on whether an investigation goes forward, or whether a prosecution is initiated. This is especially so because, as my colleague Julie O'Sullivan has explained in a very informative recent article (96 Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology 643, 697-708 (2006)), the definitions of "corruptly" in these statutes are exceedingly vague and capacious, and could easily encompass such behavior . . . if it that's what happened.

[...]

In any event, even if the corrupt-influence statutes are inapposite here, pressuring the U.S. Attorneys to make prosecution decisions based on the partisan affiliation of the possible defendants would still be unlawful, because it would violate the President's constitutional obligation to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. Indeed, the very act of removing the U.S. Attorneys might itself constitute a "take care" violation if they were fired so as to prevent prosecution of Republicans, or to smooth the way for unwarranted prosecutions of Democrats. Just because the President can remove U.S. Attorneys at will does not mean that any ground for removal is permissible. There are constitutional limits. He could not fire them because of their religion or race, for instance. And he could not fire them in order to ensure partisan prosecutorail decisionmaking.

Ibid. Lederman on executive privilege.

I suspect we have a number that are smoke screening the real reason. I think it's the "voter fraud" investigations that these folks wanted to blow up so the state legislature and/or governor in these locations could enact legislation like "photo id".

Missouri went through that mess. Filling out a faulty registration card--even with your dog's name--does NOT register one to vote; the election board exists to catch those errors, and they were caught here. But the election board here in the city, like in Florida, removed a bunch of folks off the voting rolls and during an important election, hundreds of folks were being told they could not vote.

As a result of this "chaos" caused by the bipartisan board (smelling a rat, anyone), we had legislation forcing a photo ID. Thankfully, we also have very strong wording in our constitution and our court overturned it before the November midterms. It would have disenfranchised a whole block of voters--most of whom, according to polling, would have voted Democratic.

IMHO, this is where the rats are...right in the "voter fraud" arena. Provable? Probably not unless some digging is done in those states.

Another thing that resonates re Purgegate and those reportedly involved, Hal Holbrook as Mark Felt prodding Woodward, the concrete sequential, often impenetrable everyman of stenographers purporting to be journalists:

Look, forget the myths the media's created about the White House -- the truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Oh for the days when men were men (metaphorically, i.e., Elizabeth Holtzman). And Democrats too.

Mark: I was just asking myself this very question. I suspect there are different answers for different US Attorneys. But Tim Griffin is the one most likely to explain the provision slipped into the Patriot Act removing the need for Senate confirmation, and in his case, I suspect the answer is:

Send the Republicans' chief oppo researcher to Arkansas, where Hillary Clinton spent most of her adult life, with subpoena power.

At taxpayers' expense.

Maybe the reason is a little simpler - the job skill most highly weighted by the administration as said by Kyle Sampson is "loyalty to the President and loyalty to the AG." No need to demonstrate an understanding of the constitution or the rule of law because that doesn't concern this administration.

The track record of the appointment policy in this administration would make that obvious. Appointing someone based on his/her qualification for the job seems to be at the bottom of the scale ("heckofajob, Brownie") while loyalty is at the top of the scale.

Wasn't that Guam US Attorney replaced as part of the attempt to protect Abramoff's corruption?

To the extent that particular case was documented and proven, it provides a very clear precedent for the current situation. Convicted burglars tend to have very little credibility when they're arrested for eight additional burlaries in the same neighborhood...

Reasons for the purge? All of the above and a few more that we don't know about yet.

Bush/Cheney slogan- "Democracy into Iraq after we remove the last vestiges of it in the US."

Tom

chuckie,

I'm curious as to why you think the issue/goal of jurisdiction stripping and the attorney scandal are related?

It was part of Rove's plan to create a permanent Republican Federal Government.

And yet the administration didn't pull pin and throw on this one until after there was a Democratic Congress. If anything I'd say it was a contingency plan that they decided to implement to save their hides.

What really happened, IIRC, is that Jack claimed that he go the USA for Guam removed. It was for some other (and I can't remember if it has been specified) reason. However, for Jack, it worked like the old draft board scam -- claim you can get a 4-F for someone, take their money, and do nothing. If they get drafted, say "sorry" and give the money back; otherwise, laissez les bontemps rouler.

Additional information on the above.

Local investigations by far outnumber state and federal investigations.

Out of 375 total investigations, 309 were local.

Democrats 262 - 84.79%
Republicans 37 - 11.97%
Independents 10 - 3.24%

Chi Square Expected Frequencies

Democrats 155 - 50%
Republicans 127 - 41%
Independents 28 - 09

Each local report of a corruption investigation appears as only an isolated incident rather than as a central example of a broader pattern created by the Bush Justice Department's unethical practice of political profiling.

War does not determine who is right - only who is left. Bertrand Russell

Excellent points.
Let's hope that the committee's investigators are looking into these types of issues. Even pathological control freaks act out for a reason - so their rationale is as important as their act.

As the screw turns.

From today's WaPo, Prosecutor Says Bush Appointees Interfered With Tobacco Case:

The leader of the Justice Department team that prosecuted a landmark lawsuit against tobacco companies said yesterday that Bush administration political appointees repeatedly ordered her to take steps that weakened the government's racketeering case.

Sharon Y. Eubanks said Bush loyalists in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's office began micromanaging the team's strategy in the final weeks of the 2005 trial, to the detriment of the government's claim that the industry had conspired to lie to U.S. smokers.

She said a supervisor demanded that she and her trial team drop recommendations that tobacco executives be removed from their corporate positions as a possible penalty. He and two others instructed her to tell key witnesses to change their testimony. And they ordered Eubanks to read verbatim a closing argument they had rewritten for her, she said.

"The political people were pushing the buttons and ordering us to say what we said," Eubanks said. "And because of that, we failed to zealously represent the interests of the American public."

Eubanks, who served for 22 years as a lawyer at Justice, said three political appointees were responsible for the last-minute shifts in the government's tobacco case in June 2005: then-Associate Attorney General Robert D. McCallum, then-Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler and Keisler's deputy at the time, Dan Meron.

Sid Blumenthal at Salon, What Bush is hiding:

Domenici and Wilson have both hired lawyers, given that they could potentially face prosecution for obstruction of justice. Their possible legal vulnerability and that of other Republicans across the country suggests a major reason why Bush is fighting to keep Rove from testifying before the Congress under oath.

John McKay... David Iglesias... Carol Lam... Daniel Bogden... H.E. "Bud" Cummins... Paul Charlton...

In each of these public corruption cases, it is reasonable to assume that the relevant Republican political figures either themselves complained or complained through surrogates about the U.S. attorneys to Rove, the matrix of national GOP politics. But which officials -- instead of foolishly making direct calls to the U.S. attorney, like Domenici and Wilson -- went through Rove to stymie the investigations (or rush them, if they were targeting Democrats)? Then, what did Rove say about the individual U.S. attorneys to the White House Office of Legal Counsel and officials in the Justice Department?

Bush's resistance to having Rove placed under oath or even having a transcript of his testimony appears to be a coverup of a series of obstructions of justice. The e-mails hint at the quickening pulse of communications between the White House and the Justice Department. But only sworn testimony can elicit the truth.

The report is posted here.For those of you who have seen me post, you know I am no fan of the Bush administration.  However, I am also no fan of questionable research methods.  Chi Square is utterly inadequate for the investigation of this question.

There are also other reasons to be suspicious of it.  First, it is reported by professors of communication, not by professors of political science, public policy, public management, public administration, etc.  While it is true that they report on material found in newspapers, thus it may be a communications matter, there is reason to suspect that the professors are not the most likely to have the right background.

Second, the report has been presented to one regional and one national communications association conference.  Again, the wrong venue.  There is no report of publication in a peer reviewed journal and likely there will be none because Chi Square is utterly inadequate for the investigation of this question.  The data are there for someone to analyze if they have the time.  It likely would be interesting.  But this analysis is not adequate.

All three seem likely and in character.

I'd add: An attempt to qualify a few more Republicans, who they will try to vet for loyalty, as future federal court judges or politcal candidates on either the local or federal level.

One thing about Republican strategists -- they think very long term, at times. They were out of power in congress for decades and then out of the White House for 8 years, but when they got hold of either and, for awhile, both, they had all the structures and people in place that allowed them to do pretty much what they wanted, without much compromise.

8 US attorneys might seem like a small thing now. But, it's 8 new people who get a nice resume credit that, 10-15 years from now, won't be remembered as the result of a political maneuver and will instead be seen as a sign of personal accomplishment.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Jerry Lewis! Doesn't he do that Muscular Dystrophy telethon every year! And wasn't he just wonderful in the Nutty Professor? Also, he made up with Dean Martin before he died. Give him a break!

Yours Truly

Roseanne Roseanna Danna

PS, I just saw that Alberto is staying on to "protect our kids." Wow! I'll sure sleep better tonight knowing that!

Question: Do they have ANY sense of honor or pride?

Jan Knaus

"Oh, what is my theory? This is it. (clears throat at some length) My theory that belongs to me is as follows.
(clears throat at great length)
This is how it goes.
The next thing I"m going to say is my theory. Ready?"

I think the reason for the purge is to set up, in a position of prosecutorial oversight,loyal Republicans who could investigate or obfuscate charges of voter fraud in 2008.

To bolster my theory (which is mine), let's look at the jurisdiction of the ill-fated 8. They all preside in these blue or too close to call states:

Chiara, Mich; Cummins, Ark; Lam and Ryan, Calif; Iglesia, New Mex; McKay, Wash; Bogden, N.V.; Charlton, Ariz.

"That is my theory, it is mine, and belongs to me and I own it, and what it is too." -- Hugs and Kisses, Anne Elk

Or, to put it more briefly, the 'grand scheme' in this, as in everything else we've seen from Rove, is to achieve a conservative dominance in all branches of government, including the judiciary, lasting decades, even generations. 

Think of it as Carl's "Final Solution".  

A couple of points need to be made about this whole US Attorney purge issue. First, "politics" is always involved in the appointment and release of US Attorneys. The Rethuglicans have a point there but it's only semantics. The important missing word here (and the one that makes all the difference) is PARTISAN politics. The White House intervened and purged those who were not loyal to the partisan political agenda of the most lawless White House in American history. You cannot remove politics as a whole from this process nor should it be removed. But with federal prosecutors partisanship has always been beyond the pale and rightfully so. That's the big issue here was the intervention for purely partisan reasons, the firings for purely partisan reasons.

The other issue asked is what did they expect to gain? Well, they expected to gain the purge of disloyal aparchiks and they got what they wanted. they achieved their goal. I believe they honestly are so unAmerican and so at odds with our constitutional system that they truly do not see why it actually matters that conventions in areas such as this matter let alone why the laws matter and why our leaders in particular should not break them. They are now not in any way remorseful about what they have done and indeed are resentful that anyone dares to question the divine right of the President to do as he pleases----without question and without and oversight by anyone whether the Congress or the courts.

This crowd (did I mention they are stupid as well as criminal) has been so used to running all federal departments in the most idiotically partisan manner they see no difference with Justice and the US Attorneys. The only reason this is an issue at all is because they over-reached so badly on this one and they went so far into territory that heretorfore regardless of adminstration was sacrosanct and relatively unspoiled by rank partisanship. Now this gang of crooks leads a criminal pack of elected and appointed officials the likes of which haven't been seen since the robber baron days so to staunch the bleeding that was taking place in the Cunningham, Lewis, Foggo investigations and others not totally unlike them elsewhere they had to sack these people. The entire plot hinged on the fired prosecutors keeping their mouths shut and saving face both for themselves and the adminstration's crooked leaders and upon nobody noticing otherwise and not questioning the obviously irregular circumstances particularly the use of that pernicious Specter amendment to the Patriot Act.

I suspect Bush's position is based not upon a character flaw but rather, upon an otherwise praiseworthy character trait, namely, loyalty to his close associates -- together with some political calculations.

It is likely that Rove cannot tesify under oath -- that is, he would have to plead the Fifth. Whether he believes he corruptly interfered with the administration of justice or not, he must know that a jury could find, upon circumstantial evidence, that he did. And his admissions before a Senate committee certainly wouldn't help his defense in a case brought in 2009 by DoJ attorneys appointed by the Democratic President.

Being compelled to take the Fifth before Senator Leahy can hardly be thought to advance the Bush Administration's interests.

He blows whatever political capital he has on Karl Rove? With less than two years to go in his administration, and a looming battle with Congress over Iraq? He doesn't need Rove anymore; in fact, even without this affair, Rove is a liability to him. If that's all it were, he could jettison Rove and come out as least even in the deal. But what are the chances Rove knew something that Bush didn't? Pretty slim. This has to go to Bush, or there's something else they want to protect. Rove isn't enough, even for the sake of "loyalty."

Crooked cops, crooked lawyers, crooked judges, crooked politicians, crooked doctors, crooked scientists, crooked clergymen -- but no crooked journalists. An amazing record for an amazing class of people.

G4A, having read your comments on other posts, I have no problem taking your word on this. When I took Statistics, my goal was to pass the class, which is different from understanding the subject. :-)

But just the sheer numbers of Democrats vs Republicans suggests political partisanship somewhere along the line.

War does not determine who is right - only who is left. Bertrand Russell

OK, so Alberto Gonzales says he is working tirelessly to be sure he has every American's back covered...

I don’t know about anyone else but I’ve always been suspicious of the guy that seems to go out of his way to tell you he’s "got your back covered".

See a sarcastic visual that demonstrates how many Americans feel when the Attorney General reassures us that he's got our backs covered...here:

www.thoughttheater.com

Well, there is some honor among theives, which is exactly the point. The vast majority of the USAs are honorable people, although they probably don't share the politics of most of the people on this board. (I mean, they're republican prosecutors, not liberal defenders--it's who they are.) And if you're the NeoCons, that's great, because you can find crucial places where the super-ideologues, or for variety, people who can be pressured, can do you the most good. And the great thing is that the overall honor of the group gives you cover.

The NeoCons are all about power consolidation, and holding on to power via selective vote destruction. Any election only has to be won by half the votes plus one, so their ability to negate votes has to go up at the precise rate at which people turn against them. Lather, rinse, repeat.

It really is about the math, and it's not partisan in any traditional way. It is about making voting a quaint but irrelevant exercise, useful only for keeping the people calm.

I sincerely hope that what I just wrote is total crap.

Unfortunately, I believe you are right. I don't think any of us have truly acknowledged in a rational way just how radical this administration is. This purging is rational for all sorts of reasons if you just accept that the driving premise is power consolidation. That feels so unAmerican that I think most of us resist it and search for other explanations.

"There is more to it than partisan corruption of the Justic Department, not that that's a small thing."

I did not mean to suggest that corruption ended at the DOJ. I firmly believe that every single department under the Executive Branch is corrupt. Which includes the Pentagon, CIA, FBI, NSA, and DOJ. All have been infiltrated with political operatives who will remain there for umpteen years doing the bidding of the GOP when their strings are pulled.

I suspect that the patronage, cronyism and blatant partisianship of the US Atty;s has been long standing. Which would account for Clinton making a clean sweep when he took office, he understood how the judiciary system functioned under the Executive Branch and that all the US Atty's were nothing but political operatives and politicians serving a different function at the behest of the executive branch not the US Constitution they all swear to uphold.

What spoiled rich kid GW Bush did was simply thumb his nose at the people and blatantly use the system the way he has always understood it to function.

The thing that was alarming on the news scrawl yesterday was that George P. Bush, has signed up for the Navy Reserve and he has been selected to fill one of 16 spots to train with the Naval Intelligence program. Soooo, Jeb's son is in training for sucession to the American throne....corruption will continue unabated. George P. Bush will no doubt appoint all those cronies, his uncle stacked the judicial system with to judgeships and appeallate courts and the US Supreme Court, after being elected/selected to the bench, and properly trained at his Uncle and Grandad's knee for the Bush American Dynasty.

On March 22, 2007 - 7:50pm TJKING said:

If the only press they get is the two years they spent screaming at an outgoing president backed by executive privledge on a non-crime, non scandal, but no press on anything substantive, then people will ask why have a Democratic congress?

How many times have we heard this type nonsense before; "no crime has been committed"....."there is no evidence that.... blah blah blah"....

Maybe the reason for the above is simply that no one in Congress has investigated the Bush gang for 6 years?
Some non Congressional investigations into the Bush gang have been fruitful; Safavian, Libby, Homeland Security Dept spokesman Brian Doyle, 55, caught in FBI sex sting when he thought he was communicating with a 14 year old girl, Roger Stillwell, desk officer of the Interior Dept in charge of Northern Mariana Islands to name a few.

The wingers are consistent, I have to hand them that; when Clinton was President anything that went wrong was Clinton's fault; now that Bush is President anything that goes wrong is ALSO Clinton's fault.

For 6 years, Clinton was investigated by a Republican Congress and Republican Special Prosecutors, for 6 years Bush was "investigated" by a Republican Congress and a Republican Special Prosecutor, more consistancy.

I don't agree that Rove had to know that they'd lose the 2004 election. He just had to know that there was a weakness that had to be shored up.

Rove is a lot like a bulldozer with a dead driver. It keeps going the same direction as before, destroying whatever comes next, until someone actually stops it. Rove's goal has always been to destroy any effective competition, and this US attorney operation does exactly that. In fact, it threatens to do it so well that the backlash has been stronger than they expected.

Your final paragraph is exactly right.

The thing is, this only works in the long run if they come close enough to winning in 2008 that they can steal the election. Considering the Republican recent history of squeekers, this seems to me to have been a really good assumption. Less so now, but two years ago it looked really good.

There is also the fact that Rove has wanted to leave a permanent Republican majority and a destroyed Democratic Party behind when he leaves the national stage. Creating a corps of US attorneys who work actively to destroy Democratic candidacies is an obvious step in this process.

Rove has to continue to go full out to destroy the viability of the natinional Democratic Party to win elections. He has to push even harder when Republicans win than he has to in just the squeekers, because his goal is not to just win. It is to destroy the opposition, something best done if Republicans hold the offices with power.

These are not Rule of Law people. These are "Who has the power?" people.

Their only consideration of the law as far as their own actions are concerned is to not get caught, or if caught, to not get punished, or if punished, to get a Pardon.

As far as these conservatives are concerned, the law is what you use to punish your enemies. The law is a tool used by the incumbents to keep the opposition down. It is an element of their own power, and does not otherwisehave an important social function.

These are people who harken back to King John of England prior to the time John was forced by the Barons to sign the Magna Carta. Law to them is a tool of the King, and the King is above the law since he is the law. Note the "instant declassification process" that Cheney alleges he has the authority to apply. He is not bound by the procedures in law that all other people besides the President (and with an executive order from the President which may or may not yet exist) the Vice-President.

the firing of the attorneys itself, no matter what the motive, shouldn't be enough to start this kind of battle.

The key is that even now, three months after the firing, Bush has been unable to articulate any acceptable justification for the firings. The best he can say is "Because I can!" He can't say "Obstruction of Justice" and there is no other answer to the question of why.

agmoncrieff, you make some good points, but I’ve wondered why Congress is spinning its wheels and spending its capital on this. Proving points 1 -3 may be achievable but, chances are, would only result in Gonzalez and McNulty going. While it is obvious that some of the U.S. attorney firings were interference, showing that intent may be impossible.

Bush has sneeringly engaged in so much patent lawbreaking that Congress has a duty to investigate and resolve, yet it seems they are being taken on a snipe hunt by the administration. Let’s have this executive privilege fight over some of the substantial crimes they have engaged in, such as denying due process, torturing or illegally spying on American citizens.

It would have to do with future positioning.
That would also explain their long, deliberate moves.

Not only careerism and favor-handing
but they want people in position to keep the top repubs out of jail.

Think Regionally. Act Regionally