As I've mentioned, we're working on a redesign of this site. And that process has meant putting a lot of time into thinking about web design. Not just the pure aesthetics of what looks nice or doesn't -- but how news reporting and political writing can best be arranged on a page.
One thing that recently occurred to me -- obvious, but it had never occurred to me -- is how print newspapers are highly formulaic in their graphic presentation. They're pretty much all the same with relatively minor differences at the margins. There's the tabloid and the broadsheet. But within those two broad categories the basic way layout is remarkably similar -- at least in comparison to the wild variety of modes of presentation on the web. To get some examples, see this page from Newseum, which shows daily front pages of hundreds of newspapers around the country and around the world.
I bring all this up because there are two questions I want to throw out there. One is, which papers do you think are the best designed ones on the web? The second is a bit broader. Is a basic formula emerging for publishing 'newspapers' on the web? Are certain idioms and styles becoming more and more common while fewer and fewer papers diverge radically from the standard model?
For my money, the New York Times is a very nicely designed site. The Post, on the other hand, just a did a limited redesign. And I think the result is disappointing. They tried to make the front page less busy and add more white space. But the result has an oddly unsegmented and ordered quality. And the fonts seem lifeless. (Yes, you can tell I've been thinking a lot about news site design.)
One of the design issues that interests me most about newspapers online is how you recapture the topical serendipity that is a lot of the magic of real newsprint. As you'd probably expect, I gravitate pretty heavily toward political coverage. And in doing so I miss a lot of stuff I don't know I want to read. I want to read that story on such and such in India or ... well, I don't know what it is. That's the point. But I want to read it. And it will enrich my day and turn my mind in different directions. Newsprint has that quality that you see these pieces sitting alongside the articles you're accustomed to reading. There are various ways designers try to capture this experience online -- mostly by putting collections of story links adjacent to the article you're reading. But somehow it's not quite the same.
Your thoughts about newspaper design online? And what do you think -- setting aside the underlying quality of the journalism -- is the best designed newspaper website?
--Josh Marshall
Jonathan Landay explores the curious case of Amir Mohamed Meshal, a U.S. citizen with alleged, albeit obscure, ties to al Qaeda who fled the fighting in Somalia earlier this year, was detained upon his arrival in Kenya, reportedly with U.S. help, and was subsequently deported to Ethiopia, where he now sits in a secret prison in the custody of Ethiopia's intelligence service, even though the FBI interviewed him twice and declined to pursue charges. Confused? Landay maps out what is known to this point about the status of the 24-year-old from New Jersey.
--David Kurtz
As anyone who has paid a lick of attention to the U.S. Attorney scandal knows, it is just one example--perhaps the most egregious example--of the Bush Administration's deep and widespread politicization of the Justice Department:
No other administration in contemporary times has had such a clear pattern of filling chief prosecutors' jobs with its own staff members, said experts on U.S. attorney's offices. Those experts said the emphasis in appointments traditionally has been on local roots and deference to home-state senators, whose support has been crucial to win confirmation of the nominees.The pattern from Bush's second term suggests that the dismissals were half of a two-pronged approach: While getting rid of prosecutors who did not adhere closely to administration priorities, such as rigorous enforcement of immigration violations and GOP allegations of voter fraud, White House and Justice officials also have seeded federal prosecutors' offices with people on whom they can depend to carry out the administration's agenda.
--David Kurtz
Judith Miller: The media should have "hung together" instead of caving in to Patrick Fitzgerald's subpoenas.
--David Kurtz
The Bush Administration is ratcheting up the pressure on Syria:
The State Department in recent weeks has issued a series of rhetorical broadsides against Syria, using language harsher than that usually reserved for U.S. adversaries. On Friday, the administration criticized a planned visit there by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif."It's the new Cuba - no language is too tough," said one of the officials, who like others insisted on anonymity to discuss internal government planning.
The campaign appears to fly in the face of the recommendations last December of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which urged President Bush to engage diplomatically with Syria to stabilize Iraq and address the Arab-Israeli conflict. The White House largely ignored that recommendation, agreeing only to talk with Syria about Iraqi refugees and to attend a Baghdad conference where envoys from Iran and Syria were present.
Some officials who are aware of the campaign say they fear its real aim is to weaken or even overthrow Assad and to ensure that he can't thwart the creation of an international tribunal to investigate the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. A U.N. report has implicated Syrian and Lebanese officials in the murder.
The officials say the campaign bears the imprint of Elliott Abrams, a conservative White House aide in charge of pushing Bush's global democracy agenda.
Elliott Abrams--with the way Republicans rehabilitate their own, Kyle Sampson will be attorney general in 20 years.
--David Kurtz
You only get one chance to hold on to your credibility. My team, which holds temporary custody of the Department of Justice, has blown it in this case. The Department of Justice will be paying for it for some time to come. Lots of sound investigations and convictions are now going to be questioned. That is a crying shame, because most of the 110,000 employees to whom the attorney general referred in a recent news conference, are neutral, nonpartisan public servants and do incredible work. A lot of President Bush's political appointees have done a lot of great work, too. Sadly, because of the damage done by this protracted scandal, which the administration has handled poorly at every turn, none of that good work is currently being recognized. And more ominously, the credibility of the Department of Justice may no longer be, either.
--David Kurtz
David Broder, September 4th, 2005, six days after Katrina's landfall ...
It took almost no time for President Bush to put his stamp on the national response to the tragedy that has befallen New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, a reminder that modern communications have reshaped the constitutional division of powers in our government in ways that the Founding Fathers never could have imagined.Because the commander in chief is also the communicator in chief, when a crisis emerges the nation's eyes turn to him as to no other official. We cannot yet calculate the political fallout from Hurricane Katrina and its devastating human and economic consequences, but one thing seems certain: It makes the previous signs of political weakness for Bush, measured in record-low job approval ratings, instantly irrelevant and opens new opportunities for him to regain his standing with the public.
We have seen this before. Bill Clinton was foundering in his third year in office when the destruction of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City shocked the nation and set the stage for his flawless performance of the symbolic rites of healing and comfort for the victims.
--Josh Marshall
The case of Gitmo detainee David Hicks of Australia is a travesty on so many levels, but consider the following terms of his plea bargain:
The deal included a statement by Mr. Hicks that he “has never been illegally treated” while a captive, despite claims of beatings he had made in the past. It also included a promise not to pursue suits over the treatment he received while in detention and “not to communicate in any way with the media” for a year.Critics said those requirements were a continuation of what they say has been a pattern of illegal detention policies. “It is a modern cutting out of his tongue,” said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal advocacy group, based in New York, that is coordinating the representation of detainees in many suits challenging Guantánamo detention.
What we have here is a plea bargain in which the government leverages its vast control over the life, liberty, and body of the defendant to obtain for itself a release from potential liability for its own conduct and a one-year protection from bad PR. Truth, justice, and the Gitmo way.
--David Kurtz
WaPo:
Federal prosecutors have told Bernard B. Kerik, whose nomination as homeland security secretary in 2004 ended in scandal, that he is likely to be charged with several felonies, including tax evasion and conspiracy to commit wiretapping.Kerik's indictment could set the stage for a courtroom battle that would draw attention to Kerik's extensive business and political dealings with former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who personally recommended him to President Bush for the Cabinet. Giuliani, the front-runner for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination according to most polls, later called the recommendation a mistake.
Mistakes were made.
--David Kurtz
As I wrote a few days ago, Cunningham briber Mitchell Wade often bragged about his juice with Vice President Dick Cheney. Now Laura Rozen has more on the Wade-Cheney connection.
--Josh Marshall
In an interview, James Carville responds to the liberal blogosphere's case that he should be identified as a Hillary supporter when he criticizes Barack Obama on CNN.
--Greg Sargent
Howard Dean proving he can win over major Democratic contributors once intensely skeptical of his tenure as DNC chair.
--Greg Sargent
Another hearing to look forward to. Dems want to hear from Karl Rove's (and Jack Abramoff's) former aide, Susan Ralston.
--Paul Kiel
There's a lot of speculation now about what might have spooked the White House about Carol Lam's expanded Cunningham investigation, if indeed that is why she was sacked. There's good reason to look at what she was investigating on Capitol Hill and also at the CIA. Indeed, some have even suggested that the White House might itself have been brought into the mix. The Hill and the CIA certainly. But there's another part of the equation others are missing: the Pentagon.
Remember, part of the brilliance of Cunningham's and Wilkes' scam (if that word can ever be associated with the disgraced Duke) was hiding their crooked deals deep in the black parts of the Pentagon budget, where thick layers of classification protected their schemes from virtually all scrutiny.
My reporting on the Duke Cunningham story from last year suggested that top political appointees at the Pentagon were aware of what Duke and other members of Congress were up to but looked the other way in return for help 
and/or non-interference with various Pentagon programs of dubious constitutionality, like domestic spying operations and monitoring.
Next up, whatever happened to Tommy Kontogiannis? He's one of the four bribers of Duke Cunningham, according to Duke plea agreement (coconspirator #3). Whatever else you can say about Cunningham, Wade and Wilkes, they each had clean records before they got busted in the Duke scandal. Not Kontogiannis. He pled out in a 2002 bid-rigging scheme that had to do with computers contracts for the Queens, New York school district. And back in 1994 he pled guilty in a visa fraud case after he and an employee of the US Embassy in Athens were arrested for taking bribes to provide phony US visas.
Out of the four named coconspirators in the case (one of whom is Kontogiannis's nephew, John T. Michael), Kontogiannis is the only one who hasn't been indicted. Nor, according to my reporting, does any plea deal or indictment appear to be in the works. What's that about?
--Josh Marshall
Sigh. Bush Fish and Wildlife Service appointee not only sends internal government reports to industry lobbyists but also to online gaming 'virtual friend' for unbiased second opinion.
--Josh Marshall
Check out our new and improved chart comparing Iraq votes -- this time with Joe Lieberman's votes added to the mix.
--Greg Sargent
President Bush says the Iraq/Afghanistan emergency budget supplemental is needed by mid-April or funding for the US troops in those countries will run out. A new Congressional Research Service report says that's not true. Current funds could last them through July. (ed.note: The news report is behind the subscription wall of NJ Congress Daily.)
--Josh Marshall
Radar Mag: Creeping Carneyism! This week's Time mag has no US Attorney Purge coverage.
--Josh Marshall
As we've sought to explain over recent weeks, the US Attorney Purge story connects to another extremely important story -- the way the Bush administration has moved, on political and legal fronts, to use bogus 'vote fraud' claims to depress (particularly minority) voter turnout. At least two of these US Attorneys were canned because they wouldn't make themselves partisan tools in that effort. Now ex-DOJ officials are coming forward to explain how Bush administration appointees at DOJ have been using their enforcement powers to shift election outcomes.
Definitely give this a look. There's a lot more here.
--Josh Marshall
So who's been better on Iraq over the years, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton?
Check out our massive and handy chart comparing all their votes on the war and decide for yourself.
--Greg Sargent
On the New Mexico indictment noted below, TPM Reader LS writes in ...
Did I miss the 'voter fraud' part?That's the issue Domenici was floating, I thought. This seems like a kickback case...I didn't see the voter fraud part.
Here's the answer I sent LS ...
To the best of my knowledge, two separate issues. The history of complaints re: Iglesias from Domenici and Republicans in the state was about his failure to pursue vote fraud allegations stemming from the 2004 election. The particular issue with those two calls was about this case -- political corruption, but not vote fraud. Sampson's argument yesterday was that it was that general complaint about lax vote fraud enforcement that got him canned.Late Update: In response to this TPM Reader SB writes in ...
There may be another issue of timing to yesterday's indictment of Aragon. The timing of the indictment, at the same time the hearings are going on, gives off the impression that Iglesias' replacement is saying "See, something WAS going on all along". Who's to say the indictments aren't premature now and won't be thrown out next month. Another example of this Administration's total lack of finesse when it comes to how what they do looks or sounds.
Maybe. This is a good example of one of the many reasons why political appointees and members of Congress shouldn't start trying to game criminal indictments. Once you start mucking around, politicizing the process, it's very hard to restore any faith that indictments aren't being used as proxies for spin and electioneering. Having said that, there's plenty of wrongdoing in this scandal for which we have plenty of evidence. I'll assume this is on the level until I see evidence that suggests otherwise.
--Josh Marshall
A lot of people have noted today's news that New Mexico Democrat Manny Aragon was indicted yesterday by the guy who replaced David Iglesias. This was the indictment that Sen. Domenici (R-NM) and Rep. Wilson (R-NM) wanted Iglesias to pop before the November election, to help Wilson head off the challenge from Democrat Patricia Madrid.
Now, the first thing to say is that I don't know enough about the particulars of the Aragon case to comment on it specifically. But I will say that my assumption has always been that Iglesias was investigating this case as a very real and serious criminal inquiry and probably intended eventually to bring indictments. The article notes that three of the four people indicted had actually reached sealed plea deals earlier this year. So those may actually have been secured during Iglesias's tenure.
However that may be, I would caution people against jumping to the conclusion that Iglesias's successor has brought an indictment that Iglesias himself was unwilling to seek. Given how much wrongdoing we've found in this story I wouldn't say it's impossible either. But my impression has always been that the issue here was timing. Domenici and Wilson wanted Iglesias to rush an indictment in time for the election to help Wilson hold on to her House seat. He refused.
If we hear anything that indicates otherwise, we'll let you know.
--Josh Marshall
Your media. Behold the wit and wisdom of columnist Margaret Carlson on Bill Clinton:
"Only Hillary thinks he has changed his ways."
Update: Don't miss the exchange on video, where the buffoonery really shines.
--Greg Sargent
More muck on Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons (R), courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
--Paul Kiel
House Dems strike deal for private testimony from Justice Department officials.
--Paul Kiel
Today's Must Read: who will emerge as the most shameless hack of the Bush administration? A little known Bush appointee at the Fish and Wildlife Service vies for the title.
--Paul Kiel
A little more info on Tim Griffin, the Rove protege who was installed as the US Attorney in Arkansas ..
If you're interested in reading Josh Green's Atlantic article on oppo researchers mentioned in the video, click here.
--Josh Marshall
A question from TPM Reader PE: "Did Sampson ever explain how names got put on the list? Who was responsible for that? It seems he just kept saying he just kept the list."
No. No. And you're right.
A slightly longer answer would be that on every delicate particular Sampson said that he was collecting viewpoints from various administration officials about their views on particular US Attorneys but that he couldn't remember specifics and that no one issue was ever determinative. He also said whatever records or notes he kept about the process likely no longer exist.
--Josh Marshall
Remember San Diego FBI chief Dan Dzwilewski? He's the one who said he "guaranteed[d]" politics was at the bottom of Carol Lam's firing and that her dismissal would adversely affect her public corruption investigations. He just announced he's resigning from the Bureau.
--Josh Marshall
Back in 2000, did Patriot Act-appointed US Attorney Tim Griffin really say he makes the bullets in the war against Democrats? Stay tuned.
--Josh Marshall
It's interesting. There's certainly no question that on balance the Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee have been more critical and aggressive than the Republicans. But most of the latter have at least gone through the motions of taking Sampson's bad acts seriously. Some I think more than that. Certainly Specter. I'd even say Sessions and Kyl have asked some solid questions. But no one has been as shameless and undignified as Sampson's former employer, Sen. Hatch (R-UT), even including clear false statements. I mean, his sheer lickspittlehood is bracing in its magnitude and scope.
--Josh Marshall
Check out the comments section of this post at TPMCafe. Two giants of progressive organizing discuss what went wrong over the last 30 years.
--Andrew Golis
Coming this evening: did the Rumsfeld Pentagon also get a pass on the Cunningham investigation?
--Josh Marshall
Attention all chumps who think that Carol Lam was canned for not following administration immigration enforcement policy. Sampson has just confirmed that for all their deep concern about her border enforcement policy, no one from the DOJ ever raised the issue with Lam. Ever. That's what Sampson says.
--Josh Marshall
Sen. Leahy (D-VT) gets an answer out of Sampson on why Iglesias was fired: not aggressive enough pursuing (bogus) voter fraud accusations from Republicans.
--Josh Marshall
Gotta tell ya. Still waiting to hear this question: If the Department of Justice's problem with Carol Lam was her immigration enforcement policy, why did no one from the Department of Justice ever raise the issue with Lam? I'd hate to see this hearing end without that very germane question ever being asked.
--Josh Marshall
Memo to Time's Rick Stengel: Here's still more clear evidence that the idea that the public doesn't want aggressive Dem probes of GOP is totally bogus.
--Greg Sargent
New poll: More Americans think the Democratic Party is the one with "stronger" and "better" leaders.
--Greg Sargent
Sampson very, very carefully explains Karl Rove's role in the appointment of GOP oppo research Tim Griffin as US Attorney.
--Josh Marshall
Breaking: Republicans put the kibosh on Sampson hearing? More soon. See video here.
Late Update: Kibosh now removed.
--Josh Marshall
Sampson: Arizona US Attorney Charlton fired because of difference of opinion over recorded confessions and death penalty, not his on-going criminal investigation of sitting Republican member of Congress. Also not about poor performance, as originally claimed.
--Josh Marshall
Sen. Kennedy (D-MA) makes a very good point. The prosecutor firings and replacements just happen to be in all the key 2008 swing states, and not in any states that are safe for either party -- with the exception of California, where the Lam -Cunningham investigation is. Why do you think that would be?
--Josh Marshall
Read the letter the head of the US border control field office sent to Carol Lam. This is the subtext of Sen. Feinstein's (D-CA) question below.
--Josh Marshall
A question I haven't heard yet and really want to hear: If immigration was the problem with Lam, why didn't anybody at the Justice Department ever raise the issue with her?
--Josh Marshall
Feinstein gets some more information from Sampson about Carol Lam's firing.
--Josh Marshall
To evaluate the DOJ's credibility on the various explanations for the firings, a good place to start is this November 21st 2006 email in which DOJ officials brainstorm about rationales for the firings. One pipes up: "The one common link here is that three of them are along the southern border so you could make the connection that DoJ is unhappy with the immigration prosecution numbers in those districts."
--Josh Marshall
Hatch hatches a whopper. Sen. Hatch (R-UT) just said that the positive performance evaluations for the US Attorney that people have been referring to were purely statistical in nature. That's false.
--Josh Marshall
Sen. Specter (R-PA) asks Sampson what the "real problem" was with Carol Lam.
--Josh Marshall
Sen. Hatch (R-UT) is now questioning Mr. Sampson. Remember, Sampson used to work for Hatch.
--Josh Marshall
Mr. Sampson is now saying that he believes that US Attorneys should follow the president's policy priorities. But he won't answer why certain US Attorneys were fired for not prosecuting Democrats for what turned out to be bogus claims of voter fraud or using their prosecutorial powers to turn a congressional election, as occurred in New Mexico. Hopefully he'll be pressed on this.
--Josh Marshall
Senate passes Iraq bill.
For the first time, both Houses of Congress have voted for withdrawal from Iraq.
--Greg Sargent
Muckraker's got running coverage of the Sampson hearing this morning. But here are some questions I'll be listening for from the senators. 1) Did anyone from the Department of Justice speak to Carol Lam about the Department's alleged concerns about her immigration enforcement policy? Lam says no one ever did. Did she lie? 2) Is it true that the Department of Justice long delayed okaying the indictments of Rep. Cunningham, Brent Wilkes and Dusty Foggo? 3) Did Lam's corruption investigations ever come up in the context of the debate over her dismissal?
Given the context of these questions, they could and should of course be more tightly and narrowly tailored. But that's the essence of them.
--Josh Marshall
We'll be providing running updates on the Senate hearing with Kyle Sampson, which just started, here.
--Paul Kiel
Today's Must Read: a taste of Kyle Sampson's testimony. Turns out the Attorney General isn't so good with words.
Update: Here are some key things to look for in Sampson's testimony.
--Paul Kiel
So who's behind the anti-David Iglesias radio ad now running in New Mexico?
The website of the group running the ad, New Mexicans for Honest Courts, says that the group's chairman is Linda Chavez Krumland.
Krumland was an at-large delegate to the 2004 Republican National Convention.
FEC records show, not surprisingly, that Krumland is a major contributor to Republican candidates in New Mexico. And she lists her business as Roswell Toyota.
A year ago, Krumland's husband Tom -- also a 2004 RNC delegate -- got in a heap of trouble after he and state Rep. Dan Foley tricked the New Mexico state National Guard into arranging an F-16 flyover to mark the opening of his new dealership. When first confronted about the scam, Krumland said, “If we offended anybody, then they’re unpatriotic.” As the controversy continued to grow, he eventually was forced to apologize.
In any case, you can see the Krumlands seem to be real pieces of work.
There's probably more to find out about New Mexicans for Honest Courts and the Krumlands. If your sleuthing bears fruit, let us know.
--Josh Marshall
Just in time -- an oped in the Washington Post explaining what everyone who's really studied the subject knows: that the GOP 'voter fraud' claims are themselves a fraud. The whole thing is a scam designed to make it harder for people -- especially members of minority groups -- to vote.
--Josh Marshall
The corruption runs very, very deep. Hear the radio attack ad Republicans are running against David Iglesias in New Mexico. Some weird mix of parody and infamy. But give it a listen. As I said, the depth of the moral corruption of the GOP at the moment is profound. And it shows itself in both the contemporary (bribery and self-dealing) and Early Modern (bodily and moral decay) senses of the word.
--Josh Marshall
Before Mr. Sampson goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow, let's 
get one big chunk of administration bamboozlement out of the way. In a much-quoted passage from the prepared remarks he'll deliver tomorrow, Sampson says "The distinction between 'political' and 'performance-related' reasons for removing a United States attorney is, in my view, largely artificial."
This use of the word 'political' is at the heart of Sampson's and others effort to lie their way out of what happened here.
'Political' can mean many things in different contexts. US Attorneys are 'political' appointees, in that they are overwhelmingly, though not exclusively, drawn from among the president's political supporters. They are also subject to 'political' direction, in that they are expected to follow the administration's law enforcement priorities -- more or less gun prosecutions, crack downs on dead beat dads or pornography, etc.
Neither of these meanings of the word 'political' are what this investigation is about. And, like others, Sampson is using these multiple meanings of the word as a dodge. The charge against Sampson and crew is not that they fired them for 'political' reasons. The charge is that they fired these prosecutors for not using their law enforcement powers to help the Republican party.
Set aside for the moment whether the charge is proven or whether you think it's true. That is the charge. That's what this is about.
The evidence with respect to John McKay in Washington state and David Iglesias in New Mexico is copious and overwhelming. They were fired because Republicans in their states were angry they weren't seeking indictments against Democrats over bogus claims of voter fraud -- claims which are themselves cudgels in the GOP political arsenal. In the case of Iglesias his unwillingness to use his prosecutorial powers to turn a congressional election in the Republicans' favor also played a key, perhaps the decisive role. In the case of Carol Lam, the case remains circumstantial though very strong that she was fired for pursuing the expanded Cunningham investigation.
In the cases of the other US Attorneys it is not always clear precisely why they were fired. In a case like Arizona, scuttling an investigation into a Republican congressman seems a reasonable hypothesis. But we don't know enough to say. Yet in those cases where we lack clear evidence of a partisan political aim behind the firing, the lack of any other credible explanation and the clear-cut cases of McKay, Iglesias and Lam make an assumption of wrongdoing reasonable and the need for further scrutiny unquestionable.
But this is getting ahead of ourselves. This is all about the investigation and what it may or may not uncover. But Sampson's claim and conceit is not so much that he and his crew are innocent of the charge but that the charge doesn't even really exist, that it's all just a misunderstanding or a witch-hunt. What he did is fine, he says. The problem is just the "confusion, misunderstanding and embarrassment" caused by how the thing was handled.
So, have your eyes out for Sampson's word play and games. This investigation is about whether Sampson and his crew corrupted the justice system by purging US Attorneys who wouldn't use their prosecutorial powers to help the Republican party.
--Josh Marshall
GQ gets a Q&A with canned New Mexico US Attorney David Iglesias.
A few choice nuggets: Mike Battle, the apparently apolitical former Director of the Executive Office of the United States Attorney, was the one who actually placed the firing calls to the seven US Attorneys. During Iglesias's call, Iglesias asked Battle what was going on. "I don't know, and I don't wanna know. All I know is that this came from on high," Battle told Iglesias.
Battle resigned his post in early February.
One telling question and answer ...
Q: Do you feel as if this scandal is of a piece with how the White House seems to view executive power? There's been the unitary executive theory, the suspension of habeas corpus…A: Which you can do during wartime and not get the court's restrictive powers. You can do that when your party has the House and Senate. But—and I don't think the White House factored this in enough—there was a significant sea change when the Democrats came back to power last November. The White House wasn't used to any real Congressional oversight because there hadn't been for any for six years.
And another ...
Q: Do you still consider yourself a Republican?A: Yes.
Q: Do you consider the people in the White House to be Republicans?
A: I think they've lost their way. They've lost their moral compass. On paper, we would probably be in agreement on most of the major issues, but in terms of actual practice and treating people fairly and respectfully and decently, I've lost my faith in our leadership.
--Josh Marshall
Not good, not good. The White House Counsel's Office gave explicit sign off to the DOJ's letter falsely claiming Rove and Miers played no role in Tim Griffin's appointment as US Attorney. And the sign off came from Chris Oprison, the guy at the Counsel's office who Sampson had told about Rove's and Miers' role only a couple months earlier.
--Josh Marshall
Hmmm. Looks like the new document dump may contain some bad emails for the White House. More soon.
--Josh Marshall
Interesting. In Newsweek, Mike Isikoff notes that Karl Rove is one of the recipients of an email Sen. Domenici's Chief of Staff, Steve Bell, sent on January 8th thanking Rove and two other White House aides for help getting Iglesias replaced. "Thanks for everything," writes Bell.
The direct reference in the email is to Iglesias's possible successors. But the context definitely suggests a role in the firing itself.
Here's the email Isikoff is talking about.
--Josh Marshall
According to the AP, in his prepared remarks, Kyle Sampson will tell the senate Judiciary Committee: "The distinction between 'political' and 'performance-related' reasons for removing a United States attorney is, in my view, largely artificial."
--Josh Marshall
New mini-document dump just out from the Department of Justice -- and just in time for tomorrow's Kyle Sampson testimony.
They appear to clearly show that Sampson attempted to mislead Congress by proxy -- that is to say, he gave false information to DOJ officials who were preparing to provide information to Congress.
Update: And it looks like those false statements were cleared by the White House.
--Josh Marshall
Dems make another approach to the White House for discussions over the U.S. attorney investigation.
--Paul Kiel
Time managing editor Rick Stengel speaks: Dems should be wary of aggressively probing Karl Rove, lest they be seen as "obsessively concerned with settling scores."
--Greg Sargent
You've never seen such a tongue-tied witness. Here's a clip from this morning's House hearing with GSA party-hack-in-chief Lurita Doan.
--Paul Kiel
In advance of tomorrow's testimony by arch-Purgemeister and former Gonzales chief of staff Kyle Sampson, we're trying to assemble all the relevant information together so you can best understand and interpret just what Sampson says and whether and how it comports with the facts as they are presently known.
One part of the story which is coming into focus pretty quickly is the position of Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty and the coterie around Gonzales himself.
McNulty was the one who went up to the Hill and said the firings were for poor performance. But McNulty has since told Sen. Schumer that he explicitly asked Goodling and others, who were briefing him for his testimony, various questions about what had happened in the attorney firings and that they lied to him. 'Misled' him might be the term of art. But the key point from what McNulty is saying is that if he misled Congress it wasn't intentionally. It was because Goodling et al. misled him. If true, that would be a crime. And that's almost certainly the real reason Goodling will take the fifth when called to testify.
In any case, we're going to have all this information laid out for you in time for the big event tomorrow. And with so much muck around, that reminds me that our DC Muckraking Fundraiser (for details click here) continues!
If you want to help us hire new DC reporter-bloggers to help rake all the muck that looks certain to pile up this year, click on the button below to make a contribution online or click here for instructions on contributing by mail.
--Josh Marshall
Dobson gives the thumbs down to a Fred Thompson candidacy. "I don't think he's a Christian."
--Josh Marshall
There's your answer. White House personnel appear to have been systematically avoiding using their government emails on the job because they knew they might some day be subpoenaed.
But as we noted earlier with Karl Rove, this may have been too clever by half. If the president's aides were using RNC emails or emails from other Republican political committees, they can't have even the vaguest claim to shielding those communications behind executive privilege.
--Josh Marshall
Goodling on the call when Domenici called Justice to complain about Iglesias going too soft on Democrats.
--Josh Marshall
Today's Must Read: senators grill the FBI chief over the firings of the U.S. attorneys.
--Paul Kiel
Back in January, Dan Dzwilewski, the FBI's special agent in charge of the San Diego field office, told the San Diego Union-Tribune that Carol Lam's dismissal would jeopardize on-going corruption investigations and that "I guarantee politics is involved."
After his quotes were published, the folks back in DC told him to keep quiet.
--Josh Marshall
My first taste of Washington politics was in late 1998. I was working at the American Prospect in Boston and I'd written a couple freelance pieces for Salon.com. I don't remember the precise chain of events. But I think they found themselves briefly without a Washington correspondent as the Impeachment charade was getting underway. And somehow -- because I was available or because I begged, I can't quite remember now -- I got to cover it for them. (This page has links to some of the pieces.) That was also when I met Joan Walsh, who was my editor on those pieces. I think she'd just started at Salon then. And now she runs the place. I think everyone in journalism has one of those moments, the first time they really felt in the thick of it, like they'd amount to something and that their writing mattered. This was that moment for me. And Joan as my editor is written into my memory of the whole thing, a wonderful editor who somehow didn't make me feel like as big a neophyte as I actually was.
I mention all this because Joan's just set up her own blog at Salon. I just stopped by for the first time and I'll be making a habit of it. This post is about The Politico and beltwayism.
--Josh Marshall
Mitchell Wade paid the bribes to former Rep. Duke 
Cunningham (R-CA) that eventually led to both men pleading guilty to multiple felonies. Almost two years ago we noted the odd news that the first federal contract Wade ever received was with none other than the White House, the White House itself, which is officially called the Executive Office of the President in federal contracting-speak.
The contract was signed on July 15th, 2002 and it was supposedly for "office furniture."
On December 5th, 2005, the LA Times reported that the contract was "to provide office furniture and computers for Vice President Cheney."
Now, a lot of people have wondered for a long time just what that contract was really for. Remember, this was the maiden contract for a company specializing in defense and intelligence services. (The company was approved for federal contracting two months earlier.) And they bag a contract to deliver a bunch of desks and chairs to Vice President Cheney's office? Add to the mix that, as we and others have long reported, Wade has long bragged that he had pull with the Vice President and those in his office and the whole thing starts to sound a bit fishy.
Indeed, just yesterday, Rep. Waxman (D-CA) sent the White House a letter asking for details about this mystery contract.
Well, we've found out what the contract was for.
Earlier this month, I told you about the upcoming book on the Cunningham scandal written by the guy who broke the story, Marcus Stern, and his colleagues at Copley News service, Jerry Kammer, Dean Calbreath, George E. Condon Jr, who as a team led coverage on the story for the next year.
The book's called The Wrong Stuff: The Extraordinary Saga of Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the Most Corrupt Congressman Ever Caught. Today I got a glance at a key section of the book and it reveals that what that contract was really for was for screening the president's mail.
That's right, screening the president's mail, presumably for Anthrax and other similar biohazards. Remember, this was in mid-2002, not long after the Anthrax scare that shut down several offices on Capitol Hill. So this is a pretty important contract, a pretty sensitive task on any number of levels.
This afternoon, we've independently confirmed that this is the case. According to a knowledgeable source, the text of the contract itself refers to "threat mail technology insertion" which we believe is spook-speak for screening technology for Anthrax and other biohazards.
But there's still more to the story.
If you're a Cunningham case afficionado, you 
know that in early 2002 Mitchell Wade was still acting as a cut out for his corruption mentor Brent Wilkes -- who's now awaiting trial in the Cunningham case. And around the same time Wilkes was greasing palms in DC trying to get into the Anthrax mail screening racket himself.
He got some help from Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) who got money from Wilkes. We pick up that part of the story from the San Diego Union-Tribune from March 19th, 2006 ...
Julie Doolittle was working at Buckham's offices in 2002 when Buckham introduced Brent Wilkes to her husband. Federal contracts for his flagship company, ADCS Inc., were drying up, partly because the Pentagon had been telling Congress it had little need for the company's document-scanning technology. So Wilkes was trying to get funding for two new businesses.One was tied to the 2002 anthrax scare, when tainted letters were sent to Capitol Hill. Wilkes' idea was to have all Capitol Hill mail rerouted to a site in the Midwest, where ADCS employees wearing protective suits would scan it into computers and then e-mail it back to Washington.
He called his proposed solution MailSafe – similar to the names of several anti-anthrax companies launched at that time – and began vying for federal contracts, even though the company had little to its name other than a rudimentary Web site.
The House Administration Committee, on which Doolittle sat, oversees the congressional mail system. Doolittle told his colleagues about MailSafe and introduced them to Wilkes, but the project never got off the ground.
Note the reference to the House Administration Committee. That was the committee then chaired by another Abramoff buddy -- the now-imprisoned 
Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH). And Ney, as he'd earlier done for Abramoff associate Adam Kidan, actually read into the House record an encomium to Wilkes.
So it all comes back to the same question. Why did a company like Wade's, which had no track record whatsoever and had only been approved to receive federal government contracts two months earlier, get a contract from the White House to screen the mail of the President of the United States? Was Wade actually working in concert with or as the cut out for accused fellow Cunningham briber Brent Wilkes? And what role might Doolittle and Ney have played? And what about Wade's claims of having pull with the Vice President? Is that what got him the deal?
The Wilkes-Wade business model was corrupting members of Congress and the executive branch in order to obtain pricey government contracts, often but not always for worthless products and services, and almost always stashed away in classified programs where the light of day could never expose their corrupt practices. And Wade's first contract was with the White House itself. So whose palm got greased?
Late Update: David Corn adds some more details to the mix and gives some pointers on how the investigation might proceed.
--Josh Marshall
Whoops! Joe Lieberman inadvertently reveals his own dissembling over Iraq on Senate floor today.
--Greg Sargent
Remember that $140,000 contract Cunningham briber Mitchell Wade got with the White House back in 2002 for "office furniture." We just found out what it was really for. Check back soon.
--Josh Marshall
Andrew Sullivan on the fired U.S. attorneys: "this strikes me as classic Rove."
--Paul Kiel
Senate Dems win a round.
The GOP measure to nix withdrawal timetables in the Senate's Iraq spending bill has just gone down to defeat.
--Greg Sargent
And now the case for suspicion over Carol Lam's firing. So the next time you hear that there's "no evidence" that she was fired because of an ongoing investigation into Republicans, you know where to look.
--Paul Kiel
Senate measure to strike withdrawal timetable from Iraq war spending legislation is set for a vote today at 5 P.M.
--Greg Sargent
On the run (from the Chicago Sun-Times )...
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales dashed out of a Chicago news conference this afternoon in just two and a half minutes, ducking questions about how his office gave U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald a subpar rating.Gonzales, who increasingly faces calls for his resignation, was here to promote a new ad campaign and had planned a 15-minute press availability. He left after taking just three questions over a firing scandal consuming his administration.
Before leaving, Gonzales said he wanted to "reassure the American people that nothing improper happened here."
--Josh Marshall
This is quite an accomplishment. Dean Campaign/DNC organizing guru Marshall Ganz offers a brief history of organizing in America, and a hopeful call for democratic renewal.
--Andrew Golis
OK, here you go. Everything you wanted to know about Carol Lam's prosecution of immigration cases, but were afraid to ask.
Yesterday, we gave an overview of the dispute over Lam's handing of border cases -- that's the administration's story, remember, for why she was canned.
And today, we look at evidence that Justice Department officials really didn't want Lam around no matter what.
Nobody can say we didn't give it a hard look.
--Paul Kiel
The Associated Press launches a cheap, factually questionable hit on Barack Obama.
Update: It gets better. Now the Republican National Committee is aggressively pushing the AP piece to reporters.
--Greg Sargent
TPM Reader BK on Monica G.
Monica Goodling does have a good faith basis for pleading the Fifth Amendment - just not the ones in her lawyer's letter that are getting all the attention.Under the federal False Statements statute, 18 USC 1001, it is a felony to cause another person to make a false statement to Congress. Since McNulty has allegedly told Senator Schumer that he made a false statement to Congress based on information provided to him by Monica Goodling, Goodling could very well be prosecuted for a Section 1001 violation.
All the rest of the crap in her lawyer's letter is intended to sooth as much as possible WH anger at her for invoking the Fifth.
--Josh Marshall
Our collective best wishes to Tony Snow. It's been a sobering several days, with Snow's cancer recurrence and that of Elizabeth Edwards. It's a reminder that with all our technology, the best medical care available, which I'm sure both of these two have, we're still vulnerable to being stricken in the prime of our lives by organic processes emerging from within our own bodies that we cannot control. I admire the bravery of both of them. It reminds you of the need to live every moment, every day and year, at the outer boundary of its possibilities, its potential.
--Josh Marshall
Full steam ahead for John Edwards. His campaign is getting ready to roll out a bunch of new hires beefing up his communications and online staff.
We've got an advance copy of the list of hires here.
--Greg Sargent
Today's Must Read: the history behind last month's now infamous press briefing on Iran's supply of weapons to insurgents in Iraq. (Spoiler: they didn't tell the whole truth.)
--Paul Kiel
A couple TPM Readers chime in on DOJ White House liaison Monica Goodling's plan to plead the 5th before the Senate Judiciary Committee ...
First, TPM Reader TB ...
A party can request a hearing (in federal or state court) to examine whether the party invoking the Fifth has done so properly. Goodling's attorney's letter does not provide a valid basis for invoking the Fifth. You can't invoke the Fifth to avoid perjury charges (or obstructing justice with the selfsame testimony). (I have the cases here, if you want them.) You can't invoke the Fifth because you think the Committee is on a witch hunt. Etc.They shouldn't let Goodling get away with this. She either is refusing to providing testimony because she may be testifying about some crime she has previously committed (which is a valid reason for taking the Fifth) or she isn't. If she is, and a Judge so determines, then fine (and goodbye to her attorney's ridiculous GOP talking points), and if she isn't, she should be compelled to testify under subpoena.
The funny thing is she may be obstructing justice (protecting others) by refusing to testify under a bogus claim of needing to take the Fifth.
Talk to some attorneys who work with Congressional committees and see which court they can take this to -- I would suspect the D.C. Circuit.
TPM Reader EJ makes the same point ...
I read the letter from Ms. Goodling's attorney, and it seems rather odd to me. He says that Ms. Goodling will not testify because she fears that, even though telling the truth, she may face perjury charges due to the hostility of Democrats on the Judiciary Committee. The Fifth Amendment, however, has nothing to do with perjury or with feared partisanship. Rather, it states a privilege against self-incriminating testimony. If the Fifth were to be accepted every time a witness feared a perjury indictment, we would have very few witnesses, indeed. I'm far from an expert on this matter, but I wonder if the Fifth has been properly invoked at all here.
I'm obviously not a lawyer. But I think these good folks may be on to something. (TPM Reader TB identifies himself as a lawyer.) Certainly 
there's no 5th amendment privilege against testifying before meanies. So the alleged partisanship of the committee doesn't fly. And in any case, the committee doesn't prosecute you for perjury. Unless I'm completely forgetting how this works, all they can do is make a referral to the Justice Department. (Maybe they can hand it to Gonzales next time he comes to testify.) And the most sensible defense against a perjury trap, I would have thought, would be to tell the truth. After all, to the best of my knowledge Goodling hasn't testified on this subject before -- so it's not like they can trap her into contradicting previous sworn testimony.
In any case, if you look at the letter Goodling's attorney sent the committee, the essence of his argument is that the committee has relinquished its legitimacy as an investigative forum and that she has thus unilaterally decided that she will refuse to testify. (As part of the argument for not testifying, Goodling's lawyer notes that "it is not uncommon for witnesses who give testimony before the Congress to face criminal investigations and even indictments for perjury, false statements, or obstruction of congressional proceedings.") It amounts to a sort of witness's nullification.
Interestingly, or perhaps revealingly, at the end of the letter, John Dowd, Goodling's attorney asserts that "we have advised Ms. Goodling (and she has decided) to invoke her Constitutional right not to answer any questions."
This is more than a semantic point. The constitution says nothing about a right not to answer questions. The actual words are that no one "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself" -- or in the more modern parlance, your right against self-incrimination. This is why you lose your 'right not to answer questions' as soon as you're granted immunity.
So again, look at what the Goodling letter claims. The argument throughout almost all of it is that the committee is too hostile to her for her to answer its questions. On this point, let me put this out to the lawyers in our audience, of whom there are quite a few. Take a look at the Goodling letter and let us know whether you think this holds up as grounds for asserting a 5th Amendment privilege against not testifying.
Now, one more point. Above I said 'almost' the whole argument. On page two of the letter, Goodling's lawyer asserts as the fourth reason for her refusal to testify that "it has come to our attention that a senior Department of Justice official has privately told Senator Schumer that he (the official) was not entirely candid in his report to the Committee, and that the official allegedly claimed that others, including our client, did not inform him of certain pertinent facts."
His name isn't stated. But this appears to be a reference to Deputy Attorney General McNulty, the subject of this post from earlier this evening. Here we finally appear to have a bad act that Goodling believes or at least claims may expose her to criminal prosecution -- lying to Congress by proxy by intentionally misinforming an official about to testify before Congress.
Just watching this from the outside, it looks as though that is the bad act she's afraid to testify about or -- and somehow I find this more believeable -- she's 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. And yeah, I'd feel like I was in jeopardy then too.
--Josh Marshall
Ignore the first sentence, read the second (from USNews) ...
When Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's former chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee this Thursday about the controversial firings of eight U.S. attorneys, he's unlikely to throw any big bombs at the Bush administration that are of the magnitude of a direct link between Bush's political advisor Karl Rove and the dismissals, a close associate of Sampson's tells U.S. News. But Sampson will set off some fireworks by contradicting a key assurance that Gonzales made to Congress and the American public last Tuesday that he was not in the loop during the long deliberations leading up to the firings.
--Josh Marshall
So now we've got another story. It's all Deputy AG Paul McNulty's fault apparently. Right.
Catch the headline. "Testimony Contradicted Gonzales in U.S. Attorney Matter, Sparked Controversy."
Here's the lead.
The firestorm over the fired U.S. attorneys was sparked last month when a top Justice Department official ignored guidance from the White House and rejected advice from senior administration lawyers over his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The official, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, ignored White House Counsel Harriet Miers and senior lawyers in the Justice Department when he told the committee last month of specific reasons why the administration fired seven U.S. attorneys — and appeared to acknowledge for the first time that politics was behind one dismissal. McNulty's testimony directly conflicted with the approach Miers advised, according to an unreleased internal White House e-mail described to ABC News. According to that e-mail, sources said, Miers said the administration should take the firm position that it would not comment on personnel issues.Until McNulty's testimony, administration officials had consistently refused to publicly say why specific attorneys were dismissed and insisted that the White House had complete authority to replace them. That was Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's approach when he testified before the committee in January.
I just feel like I've died and gone to muck ridiculousness heaven.
I can almost imagine Harriet Miers pitching the ABC reporter on this nonsense. Okay, sure, probably not Harriet Miers. But same difference. Look at the logic here. If McNulty just would have stuck to the Miers line forever -- the Miers line being to refuse to say why the unprecedented US Attorney firings had taken place -- then everything would have been fine.
It's true that the claim that the firings were performance related set off a chain reaction of events. Most importantly it pushed some of the US Attorneys to defend their professional reputations.
But this is the classic case of mistaking the symptom for the disease. As McNulty could see, refusing to give any explanation for an unprecedented firing of multiple US Attorneys with active investigations or prosecutions of prominent Republicans simply wasn't tenable. Vague lies about performance problems was the least worst option available.
Frankly, simply reviewing the multiple instances in which Bush Justice Department officials threatened the firees with attacking their reputations if they didn't go quietly, I have real doubts whether any of the performance related line started with McNulty. But it hardly matters. The fuse was lit when the White House ordered the DOJ to fire the list of US Attorneys for hurting Republicans and not damaging Democrats. A really good cover story might have kept the thing hidden but a blanket refusal to discuss the matter -- in a department the Congress oversees -- was never going to cut it.
There's this old line the wise folks in Washington have that 'it's not the crime, but the cover-up.'
But only fools believe that. It's always about the crime. The whole point of the cover-up is that a full revelation of the underlying crime is not survivable. Let me repeat that, the whole point of the cover-up is a recognition that a full revelation of the underlying bad act is not survivable. Indeed, the cover-ups are usually successful. And that's why they're tried so often. Just look at this administration. They're the ultimate example of this truth.
Just consider Watergate -- the ur-scandal from which this bit of faux wisdom emanates. Of course, there had to be a cover-up. How long would Richard Nixon have lasted in the White House after he came forward and admitted that he had a private team of professional crooks breaking into the opposition party's headquarters and committing various other crimes at his behest? How would that have gone over?
Same here.
Enough of this shambling foolery. The controversy wasn't 'sparked' by the break down of the cover-up. The 'controversy' is about the underlying bad acts. To say that there's a scandal because the cover-up didn't work is no more than a dingbat truism -- something you really would expect from Miers.
This is about finding out what really happened. All the effort that has gone into preventing that tells you the tale.
--Josh Marshall
This one's fun. Mucked-up GOP Rep. Gary Miller makes star appearance in DCCC video blowing cover on his fishy land deals.
--Greg Sargent
Is that your final answer?
Gonzales explains why he didn't do anything wrong to NBC.
Update: Highlights here.
--Josh Marshall
That's interesting. Last year all of us investigative reporter types were poring over the Federal Procurement database to look over MZM's various government contracts. But, according to Laura Rozen, they've apparently all been purged from the database.
Late Update: Alas, the reports of the demise of the contract files seems to have been greatly exaggerated.
--Josh Marshall
You can read the letter from Monica Goodling's lawyer to Congress here. It's a verbose case for not talking.
Update: Kyle Sampson still plans to testify.
--Paul Kiel
For a long time a lot of us have wondered how it was that MZM, Inc., the highflying defense and intelligence contracting company of confessed Duke Cunningham briber Mitchell Wade managed to get its very first government contract ever from the Executive Office of the President (i.e., the White House) in July 2002. $140,000 for office furniture.
Now, Rep. Waxman (D-CA) asks.
--Josh Marshall
Breaking off the AP wire: DoJ official Monica Goodling to take the 5th at upcoming congressional hearing.
(ed.note: The original version of this post, which ran for just under ten minutes, incorrectly listed Kyle Sampson rather than Monica Goodling, as the the DOJ aide who plans to take the 5th at the senate hearing. We regret the error.)
--Josh Marshall
Carol lam critic Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) blogs about Carol Lam's immigration policy.
--Josh Marshall
A new poll finds that nearly six in 10 back the House Dem bill mandating withdrawal from Iraq by Fall 2008.
Yet somehow, your media commentators keep reflexively recycling the bogus claim that Congressional Dems are offering voters nothing.
--Greg Sargent
This issue of White House personnel using RNC email accounts to get around governmental records archiving regulations could turn out to be a very big deal. Rep. Waxman has put the RNC on notice not to destroy any of these emails.
According to the National Journal, about 95% of Karl Rove's email traffic has been on these RNC email accounts.
Now, I don't know all the legal and constitutional ins and outs of this debate. But whatever claim the White House may have to protect everyone at the White House from congressional scrutiny by invoking executive privilege, this use of outside private email accounts may turn out to be too clever by half.
Can executive privilege even conceiveably cover emails from the Republican National Committee? By any definition, those aren't emails written or received by anyone in their capacity as a presidential advisor. They're private and have nothing to do with the president in his executive capacity.
--Josh Marshall
The first question Harriet Miers asked fired US Attorney John McKay a few months before he was sacked: "Why Republicans in the state of Washington would be angry with" him.
--Josh Marshall
Glenn Greenwald discusses the essential corruption of the Washington press corps, and even includes a youtube clip of a few of the most corrupt.
--Josh Marshall
As mentioned below, now we've got yet another excuse for why former San Diego US Attorney Carol Lam was fired.
Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) says the problem was that she wasn't aggressive enough prosecuting lower-level drug cases.
Now, Hunter's rationale for Lam's dismissal is of particular interest because he is among that small group of sitting members of Congress who worked closely with Cunningham on bagging those earmarks for which Cunningham was later sent to the slammer. Hunter has never been directly accused of wrongdoing. But he was deeply tied in to the Wilkes-earmark clique. So there's little doubt he would have felt the heat emanating from Lam's investigation.
--Josh Marshall
It's looks like we've got yet another excuse for why Cunningham prosecutor Carol Lam was fired. And this new excuse comes from someone who's name almost certainly came up in the Cunningham investigation. More soon.
--Josh Marshall
Politicization at the GSA, politicization at the Justice Department... Could there be a connection?
--Paul Kiel
Hey, if Al Gore can do it...
Defeated conservative Senator Rick Santorum plans new documentaries on "leftists" and "radical Islam."
--Greg Sargent
Today's Must Read: My boss lied to Congress and emails show I knew it? Don't blame me, blame my thumb.
--Paul Kiel
Given the amount of attention we've given to the US Attorney Purge, there's been no end of right-wing nutjobs who've written in asking just what the big deal is. In most cases, these are just attacks dressed up as questions. And I do my best -- not always successfully -- to ignore them. But interspersed in that mess of emails are a few who seem to be asking, genuinely, what the big deal is. Perhaps they're critics of the president or conservatives who genuinely don't see it. So here's how I'd answer that question.
For all the intensity and hostility awash in our politics, there are some lines we just assume aren't going to be crossed, lines that are so basic that the civil compact itself can't easily survive if they're not respected.
One of those is the vote. Whoever's in power and however intense things get, most of us assume that the party in power won't interfere with the vote count. We also assume that the administration won't use the IRS to harrass or imprison political opponents. And we assume that criminal prosecutions will be undertaken or not undertaken on the facts.
Yes, there's prosecutorial discretion. And the grandstanding, press-hungry DA is almost a cliche. But when a politician gets indicted for corruption we basically all assume it's because they're corrupt -- or, given the assumption of innocence, that the prosecution is undertaken because the prosecutor believes their case is strong and that the defendent committed the crime.
Now, again, life is made of grey areas. And our laws and regulations often take into account that even people of good faith may not be able to impartially investigate their own. That's why we had the Independent Counsel statute. The partisan affiliation of prosecutors and judges often hangs in the background of cases. And probably most Democrats and Republicans feel a bit better when a member of their party is brought down by a prosecutor of the same party because then you can assume -- whatever fairness or unfairness may have been involved -- that partisanship wasn't a factor.
So, all of this is to say that no system is perfect and partisan affiliation may distort the justice system at the margins.
But none of what we're seeing here is at the margins. What we seem to see are repeated cases in which US Attorneys were fired for not pursuing bogus prosecutions of persons of the opposite party. Or vice versa. There's little doubt that that is why McKay and Iglesias were fired and there's mounting evidence that this was the case in other firings as well. The idea that a senator calls a US Attorney at home just weeks before a federal elections and tries to jawbone him into indicting someone to help a friend get reelected is shocking. Think about it for a second. It's genuinely shocking. At a minimum one would imagine such bad acts take place with more indirection and deniability. And yet the Domenici-Iglesias call has now been relegated to the status of a footnote in the expanding scandal, notwithstanding the fact that there's now documentary evidence showing that Domenici's substantial calls to the White House and Justice Department played a direct role in getting Iglesias fired.
So what you have here is this basic line being breached. But not only that. What is equally threatening is the systematic nature of the offense. This isn't one US Attorney out to get Democrats or one rogue senator trying to monkey around with the justice system. The same thing happened in Washington state and New Mexico -- with the same sort of complaints being received and acted upon at the White House and the Department of Justice. Indeed, there appears to have been a whole process in place to root out prosecutors who wouldn't prostitute their offices for partisan goals.
We all understand that politics and the law aren't two hermetically sealed domains. And we understand that partisanship may come into play at the margins. But we expect it to be the exception to the rule and a rare one. But here it appears to have become the rule rather than the exception, a systematic effort at the highest levels to hijack the Justice Department and use it to advance the interest of one party over the other by use of selective prosecution.
--Josh Marshall
For some, it is a matter of outrage that President Bush has renewed his support for Alberto Gonzales even after new evidence has emerged that the Attorney General has repeatedly lied about the US Attorney Purge. Myself, I see it more as a matter of confirmation and almost a welcome one in that it confirms the nature of the debate we're having.
This isn't a case where Alberto Gonzales has fallen short of the president's standards or bungled some process. This is the standard. The Attorney General has done and is doing precisely what is expected of him.
Consider this.
When Alberto Gonzales went up to the Hill earlier this year and answered questions about the US Attorney firings, he lied about why they'd been fired. When evidence revealed that what he had told the Senate was not true, he told the country in his televised press conference that he hadn't been directly involved in the process and thus had not knowingly misled the Senate. Friday's document dump showed that that too was a lie. These of course are only the most conspicuous examples and I leave aside the numerous instances of his aides lying on his behalf.
It is not too much to say that everything that has come out of Alberto Gonzales' mouth on this issue has been a lie. Sure, that sounds like hyperbole. But it's just a factual summary of what the public record now shows. On the very day his second lie was being exposed Gonzales was publicly claiming "it’s reckless and irresponsible to allege that these decisions were based in any way on improper motives."
And the president is fine with all of this. Fine with the fact that the Attorney General has not only repeatedly lied to the public but has also been exposed as repeatedly lying to the public. He's fine with at least two US Attorneys being fired for not giving in to pressure to file bogus charges to help Republican candidates.
Of course he's fine with it. Because it comes from him. None of this is about Alberto Gonzales. This is about the president and the White House, which is where this entire plan was hatched. Gonzales was just following orders, executing the president's plans. This is about this president and this White House, which ... let's be honest, everyone on both sides of the aisle already knows.
--Josh Marshall
We learned more details today about the dismissal of Seattle-based U.S. Attorney John McKay.
The AP has put together a timeline of events surrounding McKay's dismissal which provides additional insights into why McKay was left off a list of nominees last year for an open federal district judgeship in Washington State even before the Department of Justice asked for his resignation as U.S. Attorney:
A close friend in the White House counsel's office - McKay won't say who - told him the administration believed Republican members of the judicial selection commission opposed him for not diligently investigating claims of voter fraud during the 2004 governor's election, which Republican Dino Rossi lost by 129 votes after two recounts."That was what they understood as being the reason I was not selected," McKay said. "That was the first I had heard inside the White House that they were concerned about this." . . .
McKay called Harriet Miers, then the White House counsel, in August and asked for an interview with the intent of correcting the record and making his case for the judgeship. . . .
Miers agreed to interview him. McKay met with her and other White House lawyers on Aug. 22.
Their first question, McKay said, was "Why would the Republicans oppose you?"
On today's Meet the Press, McKay repeated that version of events, telling Tim Russert, "[T]hey actually asked me why Republicans in the state of Washington would be angry with me." As the Washington Post noted this evening, that characterization of McKay's meeting with the Miers seems to further implicate the White House in a political purge:
McKay's disclosure of an explicit White House question about the damage his decision caused to his standing among party loyalists added new detail to his previous statement that Miers accused him of having "mishandled" the voter fraud inquiry.The use of the phrase "mishandled" left open the possibility that White House officials -- who last September were weighing whether to recommend McKay for a federal judgeship -- merely disputed McKay's professional judgment. McKay's statement yesterday instead lent new credence to suspicions that partisan political concerns weighed heavily in his subsequent firing.
It probably didn't help McKay that many Washington State conservatives mistakenly thought he had worked for the Clinton Administration:
Known as “Johnny” to friends and family, John McKay served as president of the Legal Services Corp. in Washington, D.C., before being named U.S. attorney. The Legal Services Corp. was created by Congress in 1974 as a private nonprofit corporation to provide legal services to the poor.Though McKay headed Legal Services Corp. during the Clinton administration, he wasn’t appointed by the president and didn’t work for the administration. Even so, Vance and others said the perception among conservatives was that McKay had worked for the Clinton administration.
“I knew who he was,” Tom McCabe, executive vice president of the Building Industry Association of Washington, said of John McKay. “He worked in the Clinton administration.”
McCabe was one of those who publicly called for McKay’s firing after he declined to investigate the governor’s race. The Republican-controlled Congress in the 1990s sought to eliminate the Legal Services Corp., and McKay worked with Gorton and Dicks, among others, to save it.
Tony Williams, Gorton’s former chief of staff, recalled that when passions were running high following the 2004 governor’s race, McKay’s connection to Legal Services and mistaken connection to the Clinton administration raised some eyebrows in conservative circles.
“If people Googled him and saw he ran Legal Services … I can only imagine what my more conservative friends thought,” Williams said.
One can only imagine.
--David Kurtz
Here's a nice run-down from the Post on what several of the fired US Attorneys said on the Sunday shows this morning.
--Josh Marshall
The politicization of the Justice Department has been especially acute in the Civil Rights Division, an issue we explored at some length yesterday. Today's L.A. Times has more on the complaints coming from veteran lawyers in that division:
"The political decision-making process that led to the dismissal of eight United States attorneys was standard practice in the Civil Rights Division years before these revelations," Joseph D. Rich, recently retired head of the division's voting rights section, said in a sparsely attended House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing last week."This connection should not be minimized," he said. . . .
Rich, a 37-year department veteran, said a partisan litmus test in hiring and decision-making has undermined a tradition of nonpartisan professionalism in the division.
"Unfortunately, since this administration took office, that professionalism and nonpartisan commitment to the historic mission of the division has been replaced by unprecedented political decision-making," he told the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on the Constitution, civil rights and civil liberties on Thursday.
Another Bush legacy: partial justice, which is no justice at all.
--David Kurtz
Let's go back to comments Karl Rove made on March 15 about the U.S. Attorney scandal:
When we came in in 2001, we reviewed all 93 U.S. Attorneys and over the course of time, replaced virtually all of them with appointees by the president… not all: several appointees were involved in high profile cases, important investigations, and as a result, even though they were appointees of the previous administration, we left them in office for, in some instances, years.
Let's assume that's true (and I seem to recall that Mary Jo White, in the Southern District of New York, may have been one of those handling several high-profile cases who stayed on for a time after Bush took office). It would certainly be good practice to take into account the status of investigations, especially important high-profile investigations, before potentially disrupting those investigations by replacing a U.S. Attorney.
If the Bush Administration took into account the status of ongoing investigations when removing U.S. Attorneys back in 2001, then surely it continued that practice this time around with the purge of the Gonzales 8, right? After all, Carol Lam's Duke Cunningham investigation, and its spin-off cases, is among the highest-profile congressional corruption investigations since ABSCAM. It is a sprawling probe that led into the CIA and into the congressional appropriations process which was so thoroughly corrupted under Republican rule.
But in the documents released by the Justice Department which I have reviewed, I have not seen any sort of reference to the impact of the dismissals on ongoing investigations. No mention of it being taken into consideration. No sign of internal discussions about ensuring that the continuity of the investigations were maintained. No reference to deliberations over the allocation of manpower and resources. In short, nothing to suggest that disrupting major high-profile investigations was an outcome to be avoided.
In fairness, DOJ would probably have grounds for not releasing to Congress any information pertaining to ongoing criminal investigations, so I would not necessarily expect to see any case-specific discussions in the documents released thus far. But you would expect to see some discussions generally of how to handle the effect of these dismissals on the operations of the department and its U.S. Attorney offices. (For TPM readers still making their way through the latest document dump, please be on the lookout for any such documents.) In contrast, the documents reveal extensive internal discussions of how to manage the political consequences of the dismissals.
Lots of attention has rightly been paid to another dog that did not bark: the lack of a department paper trail for the alleged "performance-related problems" that the officials claim were the basis for the dismissals. But in a scandal where the worst suspicion is that the dismissals were intended to impede ongoing public corruption investigations of Republicans, the absence in the record of any reference to the effect the dismissals might have on those investigations seems like a particularly glaring omission.
On a related note, the fact that Carol Lam was one of the dismissed U.S. Attorneys makes Alberto Gonzales' self-professed distance from the process all the more curious. Might the attorney general not want some input on the dismissal of the prosecutor handling one his department's most important cases? As Chuck Schumer has said, either Gonzales knew about the purge and sanctioned it, which is bad, or he didn't know about it, which is worse.
What is not in the DOJ documents may say as much about this scandal as what is there.
--David Kurtz
Daniel Bogden, the U.S. Attorney for Nevada until his ouster by the Bush Administration, sat down this week for an interview with the Las Vegas Sun, and doesn't pull many punches.
We pick up after the December 7 phone call in which he was asked to resign:
[Bogden] started asking questions, and finally reached acting - Associate Attorney General William Mercer, the No. 3 man at Justice. . . ."He says, 'The administration has a short two-year window of opportunity where they can get candidates out to your positions, where they can get the resume together, they can have the experience of the U.S. attorney in their background that would make them a more viable candidate for future judgeships, for political office.' " . . .
At least, that's what he was told behind the scenes.
Initially, Bogden didn't talk to the media:
Then Gonzales testified before Congress. "He raises his right hand and he says this isn't political, this isn't political, this isn't political, and I knew damn well it was political."Next, McNulty testified that the firings were related to "unspecified performance issues."
One of those alleged performance-related issues was Bogden's refusal to take an obscenity case being pushed by Brent Ward, the head of Justice's Obscenity Prosecution Task Force. Bogden recounts the episode:
Last year Ward and some of his team came to an adult video awards conference in Las Vegas."They go in there, and in their super-sleuthing work, they come up with the name of an individual who may be selling obscene videos over the Internet," Bogden said. . . .
Ward's team wanted to send a message and wanted Bogden to take it on.
He declined, citing the weakness of the case, and staff levels at his office, which had declined under the Bush administration despite Nevada's growth.
Then the e-mails emerged recently revealing Ward's harsh words about him.
"It just enraged me," Bogden said. "You see those e-mails and the things they say about me and the other attorneys, people who are very respected. And they are just demeaning and belittling and unprofessional."
A lack of professionalism within the crew running the Justice Department is not the worst of the many offenses committed in this scandal, but it is one of the reasons--perhaps the primary reason--so many people from both sides of the aisle have been so appalled by what has emerged thus far. It's not just that the department's explanations for why the USAs were dismissed don't stand up to any scrutiny or that this whole affair has all the hallmarks of a political purge. Both of those things are true. But the lack of professionalism at the highest levels of the department signals to those familiar with how things used to work at DOJ that long-held standards of conduct have been breached.
Once that breach occurs, anything can happen.
Late update: The L.A. Times goes looking for answers on the Bogden firing and comes up empty.
--David Kurtz
It is a rather revealing sign of what some Republicans mean by corruption. Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT) says that Democrats haven't been able to show that any corruption was involved in the US Attorney Purge. But we know that US Attorney David Iglesias was fired because he wouldn't submit to pressure from Republican activists and members of Congress to issue an election-timed indictment to save New Mexico's Republican Rep. Heather Wilson. That, and in general not pursuing bogus 'election fraud' prosecutions against Democrats, as Republican activists wanted. In the old rule of law days, this would be seen as the definition of corrupt use of the justice system to interfere with the integrity of elections and advance narrowly partisan aims. But to Rep. Cannon (R-UT), that's how things are supposed to work. After all, you're entitled to do this when you win elections and get to run the Justice Department, right? That's the Chris Cannon world.
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT) puts it right out there: There is "nothing wrong with firing a U.S. attorney for the reason of politics."
--David Kurtz
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) joins chorus calling for Alberto Gonzales to resign.
Update: Contrast that with support for Gonzales from Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT).
--David Kurtz
The WaPo looks into why Margaret Chiara, the ousted U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan, made the list of the Gonzales 8--and comes up with no compelling answers.
--David Kurtz
