It is the political will to impeach, not the legal grounds, that we lack.

Monday, April 30, 2007 by The Bangor Daily News (Maine) | Has Bush Committed Impeachable Acts? | by Phil Worden

As an attorney I often get asked if I think President Bush has committed any impeachable “high crimes or misdemeanors.” The Constitution gives the power to remove the President to the Congress, not the judiciary, so the question is more political than legal. The legalistic language about “high crimes and misdemeanors” and a “trial” in the Senate reminds Congress that ours is not a parliamentary system; Congress cannot remove a president with a mere “no confidence” vote. In terms of whether President Bush has committed any offenses that could justify impeachment, consider the following:
...
The Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1441 that found Iraq in material breach of prior resolutions and warned of “severe consequences” if Iraq didn’t conform. But that resolution also explicitly stated that the Security Council remained seized of the issue and the United States assured the other members that Resolution 1441 did not authorize it to attack Iraq; the U.S. would have to return to the Security Council for another resolution before it could attack Iraq. In early 2003, the United States did return to the Security Council with a resolution authorizing an attack on Iraq. When it became clear that the proposed resolution could not muster a majority, the United States withdrew the resolution and attacked Iraq anyway. There is no crime more serious than illegally starting a war.

In garnering support for his invasion of Iraq, President Bush selectively cherry-picked the advice and intelligence that supported the end result he wanted to achieve. Many career officers at the CIA and the Pentagon quit when their reservations about the war were ignored. President Bush misled Congress when he pretended he had solid intelligence that Iraq had the ability and desire to attack America.

President Bush has shown a consistent hostility to civil rights. Tens of thousands were swept up in immigration raids after the Bush administration announced it intended to use immigration laws against suspect populations not for immigration purposes but as part of its “War on Terror.” It claimed a right to seize U.S. citizens on U.S. soil and to hold them indefinitely without charges, a trial, an attorney or even the right to remain silent. It not only supported the USA PATRIOT Act but, according to the inspector general, systematically abused it after it became law.
...
Both international and U.S. law condemn torture. President Bush’s administration has redefined torture to only include serious physical injury that can lead to death and then used that narrowed definition to authorize “water boarding,” sensory deprivation, sleep denial, and other aggressive interrogation techniques commonly understood to be torture. In response, Congress passed a statute outlawing inhumane treatment of prisoners. When he signed that statute into law, President Bush issued a separate “signing statement,” saying that he reserved the right to use torture if he thought it was necessary for national security.

President Bush has authorized the use of depleted uranium shells in Iraq, which will create health hazards there for decades to come. He authorized the use of phosphorus bombs against Fallujah, a civilian target. While it’s true that phosphorus bombs burn people, their primary purpose is to suck oxygen out of the air so people hiding in buildings suffocate. “Daisy cutter” bombs create a concussion that makes the eye balls and ear drums of people hiding in bunkers explode.

My conclusion: It is the political will to impeach, not the legal grounds, that we lack. ...

Karl Rove's Jim Crow Voter Suppression Machine is Humming Along Just Fine, All Ready for 2008

Karl Rove's Jim Crow Voter Suppression Machine is Humming Along Just Fine, All Ready for 2008 | Submitted by BuzzFlash on Tue, 04/24/2007 - 6:57am. Editorials | A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

It was an April 21st article that could easily escape your notice: "Ruling lets Arizona require proof of citizenship from voters." The first paragraph of the Associated Press story reads, "A federal appeals court on Friday rejected an attempt to halt enforcement of Arizona's first-in-the-nation requirement that all residents prove they are U.S. citizens when they first register to vote."

Not that the one article in itself should set off alarm bells. But when you put together evidence from the Bush Administration in regards to voter suppression tactics, the partisan U.S. prosecutors, and other indicators, it becomes clear -- as Greg Palast has been warning us – that the Bush Republican Party plans to hold onto the White House for the GOP in 2008 through whatever means possible.

The key electoral strategy, beginning with the infamous "felon purge" in Florida in 2000, has been minority voter suppression. And when they can’t suppress enough votes, they just steal the election, as Scalia and the Supreme Court felonious five did to put Bush in office. (Remember that Gore beat Bush in the popular count by more than half a million votes.)

ProsecutorGate has revealed the missing link that tied the Rovian "Jim Crow" game plan together in one neat package.

It goes something like this. First, use every means possible to suppress minority and other Democractic votes. This includes passing "Jim Crow" style voting laws in the states. Secondly, employ tactics like the Florida felon purge to deny voting rights to Democrats. Thirdly, use U.S. prosecutors to magnify minor voting irregularities in Democratic areas and make it appear as if the Dems are engaging in widespread voter fraud. Fourthly, use the legal action brought by partisan GOP U.S. Attorneys to have loyalist Republicans cite them as further justification for "Jim Crow" laws at the state level.

Actually, the U.S. Attorney component is vital to the overall Rove electoral strategy for several reasons. One, it is most often employed before elections (in relation to voter registration, etc.) to try and influence electoral outcomes in favor of Republicans by muddying up the Democrats. Two, it helps to cover up widespread and orchestrated Republican voter fraud. (Remember the New Hampshire phone jamming case that was tied directly to the RNC. The RNC paid more than a million dollars in legal fees to defend the perpetrators of the illegal effort to interfere with a Union voter turnout effort. And who was doing political work through the RNC e-mail system? Karl Rove and other White House staffers, including his "opposition research" protégé who was just appointed U.S. Attorney in Little Rock.) Three, it gives Republican state legislators "evidence" to "demand" tough voter registration and voter identification requirements. ...

[Hatch Act]: Political Briefings At Agencies Disclosed

Political Briefings At Agencies Disclosed | White House Calls Meetings Lawful | By R. Jeffrey Smith | Washington Post Staff Writer | Thursday, April 26, 2007; Page A01

White House officials conducted 20 private briefings on Republican electoral prospects in the last midterm election for senior officials in at least 15 government agencies covered by federal restrictions on partisan political activity, a White House spokesman and other administration officials said yesterday.

The previously undisclosed briefings were part of what now appears to be a regular effort in which the White House sent senior political officials to brief top appointees in government agencies on which seats Republican candidates might win or lose, and how the election outcomes could affect the success of administration policies, the officials said.

investigation appears to have been slowed before Election Day, Mr. Renzi retained his seat, and Mr. Charlton ended up out of a job

Another Dubious Firing | Published: April 26, 2007

Congressman Rick Renzi, an Arizona Republican, was locked in a close re-election battle last fall when the local United States attorney, Paul Charlton, was investigating him for corruption. The investigation appears to have been slowed before Election Day, Mr. Renzi retained his seat, and Mr. Charlton ended up out of a job — one of eight prosecutors purged by the White House and the Justice Department.

The Arizona case adds a disturbing new chapter to that scandal. Congress needs to determine whether Mr. Charlton was fired for any reason other than threatening the Republican Party’s hold on a Congressional seat.

Mr. Renzi was fighting for his political life when the local press reported that he was facing indictment for a suspect land deal. According to The Wall Street Journal, federal investigators met unexpected resistance from the Justice Department in getting approval to proceed and, perhaps as a result, the investigation was pushed past the election.
...
Beyond that, this story line is far too similar to one involving a fired prosecutor in New Mexico. Senator Pete Domenici, a Republican, asked the prosecutor there, David Iglesias, about the status of an investigation of prominent Democrats. If Mr. Iglesias had brought indictments before the election, it could have helped Heather Wilson, a Republican congresswoman locked in a tight re-election battle. He didn’t. Mr. Domenici reportedly complained to the White House. Mr. Iglesias was fired. ...

Voter fraud: It’s hard to see that as anything but a deliberate effort to mislead the public.

The Fantasy Behind the Scandal | Published: April 15, 2007

The more we learn about the White House’s purge of United States attorneys, the more a single thread runs through it: the Bush administration’s campaign to transform the minor problem of voter fraud into a supposed national scourge.

When the public first learned about the firing of eight United States attorneys, administration officials piously declared that many of the prosecutors had ill served the public by failing to aggressively pursue voter fraud cases (against Democrats, naturally). But the more we examine this issue, the more ludicrous those claims seem.

Last week, we learned that the administration edited a government-ordered report on voter fraud to support its fantasy. The original version concluded that among experts “there is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud.” But the publicly released version said, “There is a great deal of debate on the pervasiveness of fraud.” It’s hard to see that as anything but a deliberate effort to mislead the public.

Sound familiar? In President Bush’s first term, a White House official, who had been the oil industry’s front man in trying to discredit the science of global warming, repeatedly edited government reports to play down links between climate change and greenhouse gases. And then there was the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which turned reports on old, dubious and false tales about weapons of mass destruction into warnings of clear, present and supposedly mortal dangers.

It’s obvious why the Bush administration would edit those documents, but why the voting report? Because charges of voter fraud are a key component of the Republican electoral strategy. If the public believes there are rampant efforts to vote fraudulently, or to register voters improperly, it increases support for measures like special voter ID’s, which work against the poor, the elderly, minorities and other disenfranchised groups that tend to support Democrats. Claims of rampant voter fraud also give the administration an excuse to cut back prosecutions of the real problem: officials who block voters’ access to the polls.

There is one big catch, as Eric Lipton and Ian Urbina reported in The Times last week. After a five-year crackdown, the Justice Department has not turned up any evidence that voter fraud actually is a problem. Only 86 people were convicted of voter fraud crimes as of last year — most of them Democrats and many on trivial, trumped-up charges. ...

From 2001 to 2006, no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African American or Native American voters ...

Voter Fraud and Fired U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton | by Cho | Sat Apr 21, 2007 at 05:05:11 PM EST

... Court Rejects Blocking Ariz. Voter Law, reports interesting developments in fired U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton's Arizona District...and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Friday's ruling adds to ePluribus Media's earlier rumblings about the Politicization of the Civil Rights Division and the two engines of subverting its original agenda and mandate.

The ruling is one more in a growing body of circumstantial evidence that supports what 35-year veteran and once head of the Voting Rights Section Joe Rich alleges is a well-orchestrated partisan program to disenfranchise minority voters, who, as a general rule, tend to vote Democratic.
...
Additionally, in Rich's Los Angeles Times opinion editorial, Bush's long history of tilting Justice, he writes that the Bush Administration's Department of Justice:

has notably shirked its legal responsibility to protect voting rights. From 2001 to 2006, no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African American or Native American voters. U.S. attorneys were told instead to give priority to voter fraud cases, which, when coupled with the strong support for voter ID laws, indicated an intent to depress voter turnout in minority and poor communities.

It has been strongly suggested that two of the U.S. Attorneys who were fired (Mckay and Inglesias), were so in part because they refused to use their office to further the Bush/Rove/Gonzales policy of using the faux issue of voter fraud to politicize Justice investigations prior to national elections -- and we are not talking about the long lines, the too few machines, the lock down on voter recounts because of terrorist threats in Ohio. Instead, we are talking about a systematic, planned process of shutting out the poor and middleclass.

One place to start looking seems to be who in the Civil Rights Division are pushing for the Voter ID Laws...in Georgia, Alabama, Indiana, Missouri. We should become familar with names such as Robert Popper, the new Special Counsel in the Voting Section, acting/interim U.S. Attorney Brad Schlozman, and Hans von Spakovsky, of whom Digby says

He was hired by the Bush Justice Department's civil right's division shortly after his stint down in Florida during the recount. Anyway, Von Spakovsky is not just another Atlanta lawyer. He had for years been involved with a GOP front group called the "Voter Integrity Project" (VIP) which was run by none other than Helen Blackwell, wife of notorious conservative operative Morton Blackwell. (Many of you will remember him as the guy who handed out the "purple heart" bandages at the 2004 GOP convention but he's actually much better known for years of running the dirty tricks school "The Leadership Institute" and is even credited with coining the name "Moral Majority." Let's just say he's been a playah in GOP circles for a long time --- and the VIP is one of his projects.) ...

The senators grilling Alberto Gonzales should ask him about Arkansas’ new U.S. attorney—and his history of suppressing minority voters

April 16, 2007 | The Talented Mr. Griffin | The senators grilling Alberto Gonzales should ask him about Arkansas’ new U.S. attorney—and his history of suppressing minority voters | By Greg Palast

With the sacking of eight honest prosecutors, the Bush administration has accelerated its politicization of the Justice Department.

The only thing worse than sacking an honest prosecutor is replacing one with a “criminal.” In this case, Timothy Griffin, who during the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign worked as deputy research director for the Republican National Committee (RNC) conducting “oppo” (opposition) research. On Dec. 15, Bush named Griffin as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, replacing fired prosecutor Bud Cummins.

I don’t use the term “criminal” lightly. In August 2004, while he was research director for the RNC, he sent a series of confidential e-mails to Republican Party chieftains. But instead of using the party honchos’ e-mail addresses at GeorgeWBush.com, he sent these notes to GeorgeWBush.org. That domain belongs to a brilliant jokester, John Wooden, who, suspecting he had something important in hand, forwarded them to BBC Television Newsnight, where I worked at the time.

Griffin’s dozens of e-mails contained what he called “caging lists”—simple Excel spreadsheets with the names and addresses of voters.

Sounds innocent enough. But once the addresses were plotted on maps—70,000 names in Florida alone—it became clear that virtually every name was in a minority-majority voting precinct. And most of the lists were made up of itinerant, vulnerable voters: students, the homeless and, notably, soldiers sent overseas.

It was, according to Leon County, Fla., Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho, a “challenge” list—tens of thousands of voters who the Republicans intended to block from casting ballots. This was a variant of the scheme in 2000 when then-Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris removed thousands of black citizens from voter rolls on the claim they were “felons”—when their only crime was Voting While Black, or, in other words, likely to vote Democratic. In the 2004 campaign, Griffin had a new trick: challenging voters on the grounds that they did not live at their registration address.

To “prove” these voters were committing fraud, the RNC sent first-class or registered letters to these voters, most of them black, to their address of registration, no forwarding allowed. Letters that came back as “undeliverable” were used as evidence to block the voter obtaining a ballot—or block an absentee voter from having their ballot counted.

BBC called the homes of several “fraudulent” voters. The wife of one, Randall Prausa, admitted her husband did not reside at her address in Jacksonville anymore. He was a naval airman serving overseas. Of course, it is not illegal for a serviceman to vote absentee from their home address, even if he’s black.

But it is quite illegal to target voters for challenge where race is a factor in the targeting. “That’s a crime,” Robert Kennedy Jr., an attorney expert in election law, told In These Times, “a violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.” And this crime was directed by the man who is now a U.S. attorney.

On Feb. 16, Griffin stated, in a rare moment of candor, that he does not want to face a confirmation grilling by a Democratic Congress. ...

[Presidential Records Act]: The Facts Behind The White House Email Scandals ...

April 16, 2007 | CREW Issues New Fact Sheet: The Facts Behind The White House Email Scandals

Washington - Following up on the WITHOUT A TRACE report, today Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) issued this fact sheet to clarify the ongoing White House email scandals.

There are two separate email scandals:

- Top White House officials’ use of RNC email accounts and RNC destruction of those emails
- Five million EOP emails missing from White House (EOP) server from period 3/03 to 10/05

RNC Email Scandal:

- Top White House officials, including Karl Rove, used RNC and other outside email accounts to conduct White House business

- Those officials took no steps to ensure that the emails were preserved, as the Presidential Records Act requires

- Emails show that officials were aware that if they used outside email accounts, their email messages would not be preserved

- Even though DOJ sent White House a preservation request for records related to CIA leak investigation in September 2003, RNC continued to purge all emails every 30 days until August 2004

White House Email Scandal:

- In late 2001 or early 2002, Bush administration discontinued automatic email archiving/preservation system put in place by Clinton administration (ARMS)

- Bush administration failed to put another system in place that would appropriately and effectively save email records in a records management system

- Instead, Bush administration extracts email messages from the EOP server and stores them in files on a file server

- There are no effective internal controls on this system to ensure complete set of messages; messages can be modified or deleted

- In October 2005, White House discovered emails were missing from this system, briefing White House Counsel (Harriet Miers) on the problem as well as Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s staff

- EOP’s Office of Administration (OA) did independent analysis to determine extent of missing email problem – found hundreds of days of email missing between March 2003 and October 2005, for a rough total estimate of five million missing emails

- White House Counsel was briefed on this and given plan of action to recover missing emails

- White House never implemented plan to recover missing emails (even in face of preservation order from DOJ)

- White House has still not put effective email archiving system in place, even though it knows current system is not effective and has led to at least five million missing emails

Bush administration is still not telling the truth:

- Dana Perino has said problem with EOP server occurred when White House switched from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook – this is untrue; emails are missing for a 2½ year period starting in March 2003 and ending in October 2005

- Dana Perino has said no intentional loss of any document – but by October 2005, White House knew system wasn’t working and knowingly and willfully refused to implement plan to recover five million emails missing from EOP server, instead leaving in place a system that does not work

- Dana Perino has said system set up to comply with Presidential Records Act by automatically preserving EOP emails – but White House is using system that doesn’t effectively preserve email and that doesn’t comply with archiving standards (see 36 C.F.R. Part 1234 – guidance for preserving email under Federal Records Act) and doesn’t work (e.g. five million missing emails) ...

[Bush Admin's] "actions concerning voter ID laws are part of a partisan strategy to suppress the votes of poor and minority citizens

Thu, Apr. 19, 2007 | U. S. ATTORNEYS | Campaign against alleged voter fraud fuels political tempest | By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates.

The administration intensified its efforts last year as President Bush's popularity and Republican support eroded heading into a midterm battle for control of Congress, which the Democrats won.

Facing nationwide voter registration drives by Democratic-leaning groups, the administration alleged widespread election fraud and endorsed proposals for tougher state and federal voter identification laws. Presidential political adviser Karl Rove alluded to the strategy in April 2006 when he railed about voter fraud in a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association.

Questions about the administration's campaign against alleged voter fraud have helped fuel the political tempest over the firings last year of eight U.S. attorneys, several of whom were ousted in part because they failed to bring voter fraud cases important to Republican politicians. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales could shed more light on the reasons for those firings when he appears Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Civil rights advocates charge that the administration's policies were intended to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of poor and minority voters who tend to support Democrats, and by filing state and federal lawsuits, civil rights groups have won court rulings blocking some of its actions.

Justice Department spokesperson Cynthia Magnuson called any allegation that the department has rolled back minority voting rights "fundamentally flawed."

She said the department has "a completely robust record when it comes to enforcing federal voting rights laws," citing its support last year for reauthorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the filing of at least 20 suits to ensure that language services are available to non-English speaking voters.

The administration, however, has repeatedly invoked allegations of widespread voter fraud to justify tougher voter ID measures and other steps to restrict access to the ballot, even though research suggests that voter fraud is rare.

Since President Bush's first attorney general, John Ashcroft, a former Republican senator from Missouri, launched a "Ballot Access and Voter Integrity Initiative" in 2001, Justice Department political appointees have exhorted U.S. attorneys to prosecute voter fraud cases, and the department's Civil Rights Division has sought to roll back policies to protect minority voting rights.

On virtually every significant decision affecting election balloting since 2001, the division's Voting Rights Section has come down on the side of Republicans, notably in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Washington and other states where recent elections have been decided by narrow margins.

Joseph Rich, who left his job as chief of the section in 2005, said these events formed an unmistakable pattern.

"As more information becomes available about the administration's priority on combating alleged, but not well substantiated, voter fraud, the more apparent it is that its actions concerning voter ID laws are part of a partisan strategy to suppress the votes of poor and minority citizens," he said. ...
...
Former department lawyers, public records and other documents show that since Bush took office, political appointees in the Civil Rights Division have:

-Approved Georgia and Arizona laws that tightened voter ID requirements. A federal judge tossed out the Georgia law as an unconstitutional infringement on the rights of poor voters, and a federal appeals court signaled its objections to the Arizona law on similar grounds last fall, but that litigation was delayed by the U.S. Supreme Court until after the election.

-Issued advisory opinions that overstated a 2002 federal election law by asserting that it required states to disqualify new voting registrants if their identification didn't match that in computer databases, prompting at least three states to reject tens of thousands of applicants mistakenly.

-Done little to enforce a provision of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act that requires state public assistance agencies to register voters. The inaction has contributed to a 50 percent decline in annual registrations at those agencies, to 1 million from 2 million.

-Sued at least six states on grounds that they had too many people on their voter rolls. Some eligible voters were removed in the resulting purges.
...

"Mr. Gonzales has presided over an unprecedented crippling of the Constitution's time-honored checks and balances,"

Conservatives to Bush: Fire Gonzales | Monday, Apr. 16, 2007 By ADAM ZAGORIN/WASHINGTON

... a group of influential conservatives and longtime Bush supporters has written a letter to the White House to call for his resignation.

The two-page letter, written on stationery of the American Freedom Agenda, a recently formed body designed to promote conservative legal principles, is blunt. Addressed to both Bush and Gonzales, it goes well beyond the U.S. attorneys controversy and details other alleged failings by Gonzales. "Mr. Gonzales has presided over an unprecedented crippling of the Constitution's time-honored checks and balances," it declares. "He has brought rule of law into disrepute, and debased honesty as the coin of the realm." Alluding to ongoing scandal, it notes: "He has engendered the suspicion that partisan politics trumps evenhanded law enforcement in the Department of Justice."

The letter concludes by saying, "Attorney General Gonzales has proven an unsuitable steward of the law and should resign for the good of the country... The President should accept the resignation, and set a standard to which the wise and honest might repair in nominating a successor..." It is the first public demand by a group of conservatives for Gonzales' firing. ...

[US Senator] Domenici Sought [US attorney] Iglesias Ouster

Sunday, April 15, 2007 | Domenici Sought Iglesias Ouster | By Mike Gallagher | Copyright © 2007 Albuquerque Journal; Journal Investigative Reporter

Former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias was fired after Sen. Pete Domenici, who had been unhappy with Iglesias for some time, made a personal appeal to the White House, the Journal has learned.
Domenici had complained about Iglesias before, at one point going to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales before taking his request to the president as a last resort. ...

"White House was trying to ... creating a public image of voter fraud ...to make it more difficult for people to vote"

Pundit: White House wants it 'difficult for people to vote' | David Edwards | Published: Sunday April 15, 2007

On Sunday's edition of ABC's This Week, pundit Robert Reich suggests the core issue behind the US attorney firings and missing White House emails. Reich says, "I think the question here is that once you start asking, 'Should the emails have been disclosed?' -- 'Which emails to disclose?' -- is that the public loses sight of what the big issue is in the background."

Reich continues, saying, "The issue at stake here has to do with what the White House was trying to do with the US attorneys. What the White House was trying to do in terms of, perhaps, creating a public image of voter fraud across this country that would entitle the White House to make it more difficult for people to vote. That seems to be to be a very large issue that needs to be discussed." ...

Sampson Lied Under Oath: ‘Had In Mind’ Plan To Replace U.S. Attorneys With Loyal Bushies

Sampson Lied Under Oath: ‘Had In Mind’ Plan To Replace U.S. Attorneys With Loyal Bushies

On March 29, former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Kyle Sampson told the Senate Judiciary Committee, under oath, that he had no replacements in mind before the Justice Department fired the U.S. attorneys in Dec. 2006:

SCHUMER: Did you or did you not have in mind specific replacements for the dismissed U.S. Attorneys before they were asked to resign on December 7th, 2006.

SAMPSON: I personally did not. On December 7th, I did not have in mind any replacements for any of the seven who were asked to resign.

But a new e-mail released to the House Judiciary Committee shows that on Jan. 9, 2006 — a year before the prosecutors were fired — Sampson recommended replacements for almost every one of the U.S. attorneys on the administration’s hit list, suggesting that these prosecutors were fired to make way for partisan loyalists. ...

"any e-mail relating to official business...qualifies as a presidential record."

Rove warned in 'manuals, memos, and briefings' to save emails | Andrew Bielak | Published: Saturday April 14, 2007

Further complicating the picture in White House adviser Karl Rove's deleting of numerous e-mails, the Los Angeles Times reports today that the White House established a policy of saving emails related to official business and warned staff not to delete them in a number of instances.

According to an investigation by the LA Times, the White House took pains to establish a standard email handling procedures on a number of occasions. Among a set of employee manuals from 2001, a memorandum from former White House counsel and current Attorney General explains that "any e-mail relating to official business...qualifies as a presidential record." ...

"It looks like Karl Rove may well have destroyed evidence that implicated him in" ... [Plame CIA outing]

Watchdog to Fitzgerald: Re-open Plame investigation in light of Rove's 'missing' | RAW STORY | Published: Friday April 13, 2007

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a Washington-based legal watchdog organization, has called on Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to re-open an investigation into White House adviser Karl Rove's role in the identity leak of former CIA agent Valerie Plame.

"It looks like Karl Rove may well have destroyed evidence that implicated him in the White House's orchestrated efforts to leak Valerie Plame Wilson's covert identity to the press in retaliation against her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson," said Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director.

Earlier today, RAW STORY reported on an admission by a lawyer for the Republican National Committee (RNC) that four years of emails sent by Rove from an RNC-issued email account have been "lost." Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, has denied that Rove intentionally deleted the emails.

In light of the missing emails and what they might contain, Sloan urges that Fitzgerald "should immediately reopen his investigation into whether Rove took part in the leak as well as whether he obstructed justice in the ensuing leak investigation." ...

In 5-Year Effort, Scant Evidence of Voter Fraud: only 86 convictions across US, Wisconsin lost every case of double counting

In 5-Year Effort, Scant Evidence of Voter Fraud By ERIC LIPTON and IAN URBINA | Published: April 12, 2007

WASHINGTON, April 11 — Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews.

Although Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process and, possibly, cost the party election victories, about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted as of last year.

Most of those charged have been Democrats, voting records show. Many of those charged by the Justice Department appear to have mistakenly filled out registration forms or misunderstood eligibility rules, a review of court records and interviews with prosecutors and defense lawyers show. ...
...
A federal panel, the Election Assistance Commission, reported last year that the pervasiveness of fraud was debatable. That conclusion played down findings of the consultants who said there was little evidence of it across the country, according to a review of the original report by The New York Times that was reported on Wednesday.

Mistakes and lapses in enforcing voting and registration rules routinely occur in elections, allowing thousands of ineligible voters to go to the polls. But the federal cases provide little evidence of widespread, organized fraud, prosecutors and election law experts said.
...
In swing states, including Ohio and Wisconsin, party leaders conducted inquiries to find people who may have voted improperly and prodded officials to act on their findings.

But the party officials and lawmakers were often disappointed. The accusations led to relatively few cases, and a significant number resulted in acquittals.
...
The Wisconsin prosecutors lost every case on double voting. Cynthia C. Alicea, 25, was accused of multiple voting in 2004 because officials found two registration cards in her name. She and others were acquitted after explaining that they had filed a second card and voted just once after a clerk said they had filled out the first card incorrectly.
...

“serious concerns about the White House’s compliance with the Presidential Records Act,"

Missing E-Mail May Be Related to Prosecutors | By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG | Published: April 13, 2007

WASHINGTON, April 12—The White House said Thursday that missing e-mail messages sent on Republican Party accounts may include some relating to the firing of eight United States attorneys.

The disclosure became a fresh political problem for the White House, as Democrats stepped up their inquiry into whether Karl Rove and other top aides to President Bush used the e-mail accounts maintained by the Republican National Committee to circumvent record-keeping requirements.

It also exposed the dual electronic lives led by Mr. Rove and 21 other White House officials who maintain separate e-mail accounts for government business and work on political campaigns — and raised serious questions, in the eyes of Democrats, about whether political accounts were used to conduct official work without leaving a paper trail.
...
Mr. Waxman also said he now had “serious concerns about the White House’s compliance with the Presidential Records Act,” a 1978 law that requires administrations to keep records of deliberations, decisions and policies. The congressman asked for an inventory of all communications by White House officials on nongovernment e-mail accounts.

President Bush has directed the White House counsel’s office to try to recover any missing e-mail messages, but Scott Stanzel, the deputy White House press secretary, said it was unclear how much may have been lost. As to whether the missing e-mail related to the prosecutors’ dismissals, Mr. Stanzel said, “It can’t be ruled out.”

Democrats were skeptical that any e-mail messages are truly missing. ...

[Presidential Records Act]: comparing e-mails lost by the Republican National Committee to President Richard Nixon's famous "18-minute gap"...

Leahy: Missing RNC E-mails are like Nixon's 18-minute gap | Michael Roston | Published: Thursday April 12, 2007

The top Senate Democrat leading investigations into the dismissal of 8 U.S. Attorneys by the Justice Department is comparing e-mails lost by the Republican National Committee to President Richard Nixon's famous "18-minute gap" in White House tape recordings.

"Now we are learning that the 'off book' communications they were having about these actions, by using Republican political email addresses, have not been preserved," Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said on the Senate floor.

He added, "Like the famous 18-minute gap in the Nixon White House tapes, it appears likely that key documentation has been erased or misplaced. This sounds like the Administration's version of 'the dog ate my homework.'"

The senator was referring to the Nixon White House tapes subpoenaed during the Watergate investigation. On one tape, there was an 18 1/2 minute gap. The former president's secretary, Rose Mary Woods, claimed responsibility for "accidentally" erasing 5 minutes of the recording, but not the remainder of the gap. Further investigations raised questions about the veracity of her testimony.

The Associated Press also noted that when actually delivered, Senator Leahy raised further doubts about the Republican Party's explanation for the lost e-mails.

"They say they have not been preserved. I don't believe that!" he proclaimed. "You can't erase e-mails, not today. They've gone through too many servers."

Leahy threatened further action in response to the news. "Those e-mails are there, they just don't want to produce them. We'll subpoena them if necessary." ...

National media bury Wisconsin story backing up charges that Bush has politicized U.S. attorney offices: Reps used to influence election

Wed, Apr 11, 2007 5:52pm EST | National media bury Wisconsin story backing up charges that Bush has politicized U.S. attorney offices

An April 11 article in The Washington Post on the House Judiciary Committee's decision to subpoena hundreds of Justice Department documents related to the U.S. attorney firings noted that Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) has "joined other members in demanding records and additional information about a federal public corruption case" in Wisconsin. Regarding the case, the Post reported only that a federal appeals court in Chicago ordered a former state employee to be "released after overturning her conviction." The article did not report that Georgia Thompson -- who was not identified by name -- was convicted on charges brought by a Bush-appointed U.S. attorney just before the 2006 election, that Wisconsin Republicans used her conviction to attack Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle (D) during the campaign, that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit took the highly unusual action of ordering the defendant released during oral argument because of the lack of evidence to support the conviction, and that Feingold and five other senators have requested information about the case to investigate whether "politics may have played an inappropriate role" in the prosecution.

An April 11 Los Angeles Times article reported that the senators were looking to see if "politics may have played an inappropriate role" in the case, but also left out the fact that Republicans had used Thompson's conviction to attack Doyle.

Several other national media outlets have ignored the Thompson case altogether, despite its relevance to congressional allegations that the Bush administration has attempted to use the U.S. attorney function for political and electoral advantage. A Media Matters for America review* found that USA Today and The Wall Street Journal have not covered the story, nor have the national network broadcast news programs on CBS, NBC, and ABC. As Media Matters has previously noted, the broadcast networks' evening news programs -- ABC's World News with Charles Gibson, the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, and NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams -- were all slow to report on the U.S. attorney scandal. ...

30 page timeline summarized numerous news reports and GOP news releases regarding problems with new voter registration and alleged fraud ,,,

April 10, 2007 ... Gannett News Service
Kohl, Feingold seek documents from Gonzales By BRIAN TUMULTY

WASHINGTON - An effort by the Wisconsin Republican Party to speed up a federal investigation into voter fraud has emerged as the latest chapter in the controversy over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Among the many e-mails and other documents the Justice Department has turned over to congressional investigators is a 30-page timeline prepared by Christine Lato, former communications director for the Wisconsin Republican Party.

The timeline summarized numerous news reports and GOP news releases regarding problems with new voter registration and alleged fraud between Aug. 31, 2004 and April 1, 2005.

The cover sheet for Lato's memo bears the name of Kyle Sampson, who recently resigned as Gonzales' chief of staff amid the furor over last year's firings. ...

[inJustice Dept?]: career lawyers were systematically fired or forced out and replaced by members of conservative or Christian groups

Who's the Boss?How Pat Robertson's law school is changing America. | By Dahlia Lithwick | Posted Saturday, April 7, 2007, at 6:52 AM ET
...
This legal worldview meshed perfectly with that of former Attorney General John Ashcroft—a devout Pentecostal who forbade use of the word "pride," as well as the phrase "no higher calling than public service," on documents bearing his signature. (He also snatched the last bit of fun out of his press conferences when he covered up the bared breasts of the DoJ statue the "Spirit of Justice"). No surprise that, as he launched a transformation of the Justice Department, the Goodlings looked good to him.
...
One of Ashcroft's most profound changes was to the Civil Rights Division, launched in 1957 to file cases on behalf of African-Americans and women. Under Ashcroft, career lawyers were systematically fired or forced out and replaced by members of conservative or Christian groups or folks with no civil rights experience. In the five years after 2001, the civil rights division brought no voting cases on behalf of African-Americans. It brought one employment case on behalf of an African-American. Instead, the division took up the "civil rights" abuses of reverse discrimination—claims of voter fraud or discrimination against Christians. On Feb. 20, Gonzales announced a new initiative called the First Freedom Project to carry out "even greater enforcement of religious rights for all Americans." In his view, the fight for a student's right to read a Bible at school is as urgent a civil rights problem as the right to vote.
...
No, the real concern here is that Goodling and her ilk somehow began to conflate God's work with the president's. Probably not a lesson she learned in law school. The dream of Regent and its counterparts, like Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, is to redress perceived wrongs to Christians, to reclaim the public square, and reassert Christian political authority. And while that may have been a part of the Bush/Rove plan, it was, in the end, only a small part. Their real zeal was for earthly power. And Goodling was left holding the earthly bag.

At the end of the day, Goodling and the other young foot soldiers for God may simply have run afoul of the first rule of politics, codified in Psalm 146: "Put no trust in princes, in mere mortals in whom there is no help."

Dept of Justice: Conservative credentials rose, while prior experience in civil rights law and the ranking of the law school attended dropped ....

Scandal puts spotlight on Christian law school | Grads influential in Justice Dept. |
By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | April 8, 2007

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. -- The title of the course was Constitutional Law, but the subject was sin. Before any casebooks were opened, a student led his classmates in a 10-minute devotional talk, completed with "amens," about the need to preserve their Christian values.
...
Because [DOJ assistant, taking the 5th before congress] Goodling graduated from Regent in 1999 and has scant prosecutorial experience, her qualifications to evaluate the performance of US attorneys have come under fire. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, asked at a hearing: "Should we be concerned with the experience level of the people who are making these highly significant decisions?"

And across the political blogosphere, critics have held up Goodling, who declined to be interviewed, as a prime example of the Bush administration subordinating ability to politics in hiring decisions.

"It used to be that high-level DOJ jobs were generally reserved for the best of the legal profession," wrote a contributor to The New Republic website . ". . . That a recent graduate of one of the very worst (and sketchiest) law schools with virtually no relevant experience could ascend to this position is a sure sign that there is something seriously wrong at the DOJ."
...
Not long ago, it was rare for Regent graduates to join the federal government. But in 2001, the Bush administration picked the dean of Regent's government school, Kay Coles James , to be the director of the Office of Personnel Management -- essentially the head of human resources for the executive branch. The doors of opportunity for government jobs were thrown open to Regent alumni.

"We've had great placement," said Jay Sekulow , who heads a non profit law firm based at Regent that files lawsuits aimed at lowering barriers between church and state. "We've had a lot of people in key positions."

Many of those who have Regent law degrees, including Goodling, joined the Department of Justice. Their path to employment was further eased in late 2002, when John Ashcroft , then attorney general, changed longstanding rules for hiring lawyers to fill vacancies in the career ranks.

Previously, veteran civil servants screened applicants and recommended whom to hire, usually picking top students from elite schools.

In a recent Regent law school newsletter, a 2004 graduate described being interviewed for a job as a trial attorney at the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division in October 2003. Asked to name the Supreme Court decision from the past 20 years with which he most disagreed, he cited Lawrence v. Texas, the ruling striking down a law against sodomy because it violated gay people's civil rights.

"When one of the interviewers agreed and said that decision in Lawrence was 'maddening,' I knew I correctly answered the question," wrote the Regent graduate . The administration hired him for the Civil Rights Division's housing section -- the only employment offer he received after graduation, he said.

The graduate from Regent -- which is ranked a "tier four" school by US News & World Report, the lowest score and essentially a tie for 136th place -- was not the only lawyer with modest credentials to be hired by the Civil Rights Division after the administration imposed greater political control over career hiring.

The changes resulted in a sometimes dramatic alteration to the profile of new hires beginning in 2003, as the Globe reported last year after obtaining resumes from 2001-2006 to three sections in the civil rights division. Conservative credentials rose, while prior experience in civil rights law and the average ranking of the law school attended by the applicant dropped. ...

Attorneys: raising questions about whether prosecutors tried last year to tilt close elections toward the Republicans.

Another Layer of ScandalPublished: April 9, 2007

As Congress investigates the politicization of the United States attorney offices by the Bush administration, it should review the extraordinary events the other day in a federal courtroom in Wisconsin. The case involved Georgia Thompson, a state employee sent to prison on the flimsiest of corruption charges just as her boss, a Democrat, was fighting off a Republican challenger. It just might shed some light on a question that lurks behind the firing of eight top federal prosecutors: what did the surviving attorneys do to escape the axe?

Ms. Thompson, a purchasing official in the state’s Department of Administration, was accused by the United States attorney in Milwaukee, Steven Biskupic, of awarding a travel contract to a company whose chief executive contributed to the campaign of Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat. Ms. Thompson said the decision was made on the merits, but she was convicted and sent to prison before she could appeal.

The prosecution was a boon to Mr. Doyle’s opponent. Republicans ran a barrage of attack ads that purported to tie Ms. Thompson’s “corruption” to Mr. Doyle. Ms. Thompson was sentenced shortly before the election, which Governor Doyle won.

The Chicago-based United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit seemed shocked by the injustice of her conviction. It took the extraordinary step of releasing Ms. Thompson from prison immediately after hearing arguments, without waiting to issue a ruling. One of the judges hinted that Ms. Thompson may have been railroaded. “It strikes me that your evidence is beyond thin,” Judge Diane Wood told the lawyer from Mr. Biskupic’s office.

Ms. Thompson’s case is not the only one raising questions about whether prosecutors tried last year to tilt close elections toward the Republicans. New Jersey’s federal prosecutor conducted an investigation of weak-looking allegations against Senator Robert Menendez that was used in Republican ads.

Congress should look into both cases to determine whether partisan politics played a role — and whether they were coordinated with anyone at the Justice Department or the White House. ...

Inserting Politics Into Justice

Inserting Politics Into Justice | By E. J. Dionne Jr. | Saturday, March 24, 2007; Page A17

The senator vigorously rejected the president's claim of executive privilege. "I find this extraordinary and troublesome," he said, "and I think it will ultimately be damaging to the president. . . . This is an attempt to stonewall our committee, and the public will be outraged."

Doesn't that sound like one of those tough statements by Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, the Democratic point man on the U.S. attorney scandal? The speaker was actually the Republican whom Schumer defeated nine years ago, Alfonse D'Amato, discussing Bill Clinton's invocation of executive privilege in the Whitewater investigation. Nice to see Chuck and Al agree on something.

So many principles that Republicans held dear when they were trying to take Clinton down are no longer operative. This certainly applies to a 1998 column now whizzing around the Internet that ran under the headline "Executive Privilege Is a Dodge." It was written by Tony Snow, who is now President Bush's press secretary.

To investigate Clinton -- even his Christmas card list -- was God's work. To investigate Bush is "to head down the partisan road of issuing subpoenas and demanding show trials," as the president put it this week. ...

Documents Show Gonzales Approved Firings

Documents Show Gonzales Approved Firings | LARA JAKES JORDAN | AP | March 23, 2007 11:49 PM EST |
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Alberto Gonzales approved plans to fire several U.S. attorneys in an hourlong meeting last fall, according to documents released Friday that indicate he was more involved in the dismissals than he has claimed.

Last week, Gonzales said he "was not involved in any discussions about what was going on" in the firings of eight prosecutors that has since led to a political firestorm and calls for his ouster.

A Nov. 27 meeting, in which the attorney general and at least five top Justice Department officials participated, focused on a five-step plan for carrying out the firings of the prosecutors, Gonzales' aides said late Friday.

There, Gonzales signed off on the plan, which was drafted by his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson. Sampson resigned last week. Another Justice aide closely involved in the dismissals, White House liaison Monica Goodling, has also taken a leave of absence, two officials said. ...

Justice Department has backed laws that narrow minority voting ... policies that critics say have been intended to suppress Democratic votes

U.S. ATTORNEYS | New U.S. attorneys seem to have partisan records | By Greg Gordon, Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Under President Bush, the Justice Department has backed laws that narrow minority voting rights and pressed U.S. attorneys to investigate voter fraud - policies that critics say have been intended to suppress Democratic votes.
...
Since 2005, McClatchy Newspapers has found, Bush has appointed at least three U.S. attorneys who had worked in the Justice Department's civil rights division when it was rolling back longstanding voting-rights policies aimed at protecting predominantly poor, minority voters.

Another newly installed U.S. attorney, Tim Griffin in Little Rock, Ark., was accused of participating in efforts to suppress Democratic votes in Florida during the 2004 presidential election while he was a research director for the Republican National Committee. He's denied any wrongdoing.

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the four U.S. attorneys weren't chosen only because of their backgrounds in election issues, but "we would expect any U.S. attorney to prosecute voting fraud."

Taken together, critics say, the replacement of the U.S. attorneys, the voter-fraud campaign and the changes in Justice Department voting rights policies suggest that the Bush administration may have been using its law enforcement powers for partisan political purposes. ...

Leading voices in the conservative movement are demanding that the Democrat-controlled Congress restore checks and balances ... rein in George W. Bush

The Right Seeks to Rein In Presidential Power | By William Fisher | t r u t h o u t | Interview | Wednesday 04 April 2007

Leading voices in the conservative movement are demanding that the Democrat-controlled Congress restore checks and balances within the government and rein in the power of President George W. Bush.

But their point of view is consistently being drowned out by the "Ann Coulter wing" of the Republican Party, fed by the "ignorance of members of Congress about the principles of a constitutional democracy."

This is the view expressed by Bruce Fein in an exclusive Truthout interview. Fein served as associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan and is a founder of a conservative movement known as the Liberty Coalition. The Coalition has launched a new initiative, known as the American Freedom Agenda. The AFA's ten-point action program calls on Congress to:

* End the use of military commissions to prosecute crimes.
* Prohibit the use of secret evidence or evidence obtained by torture.
* Prohibit the detention of American citizens as enemy combatants without proof.
* Restore habeas corpus for alleged alien combatants.
* End National Security Agency warrantless wiretapping.
* Challenge presidential signing statements.
* Bar executive use of the state-secret privilege to deny justice.
* Prohibit the president from collaborating with foreign governments to kidnap, detain or torture persons abroad.
* Amend the Espionage Act to permit journalists to report on classified national security matters without threat of persecution.
* Prohibit of the labeling of groups or individuals in the US as global terrorists based on secret evidence.

The AFA plans to draft legislation to achieve these goals and to lobby Congress to put the proposed measures on the House and Senate calendars. ...

Attorney Purge = Stacking The DOJ To Suppress Voting Rights

Attorney Purge = Stacking The DOJ To Suppress Voting Rights

By: Nicole Belle on Sunday, April 1st, 2007 at 10:15 AM - PDT

As Gonzalesgate continues, more and more people are starting to come forward. After spending more than 35 years fighting for voter's rights in the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, Joseph D. Rich retired from the DOJ in 2005. Unhappy with what he saw during his time working under the Bush Administration and the recent attorney purge, Rich is now speaking out. In an Op-Ed in Thursday's L.A. Times, Rich tells of how the Bush Administration began pushing out career DOJ employees over the past six years and replacing them with political appointees who were instructed to toe the party line, not uphold the law. It's a stunning indictment of just how partisan conditions at the DOJ have become.

LA Times.com:

The scandal unfolding around the firing of eight U.S. attorneys compels the conclusion that the Bush administration has rewarded loyalty over all else. A destructive pattern of partisan political actions at the Justice Department started long before this incident, however, as those of us who worked in its civil rights division can attest.

I spent more than 35 years in the department enforcing federal civil rights laws - particularly voting rights. Before leaving in 2005, I worked for attorneys general with dramatically different political philosophies - from John Mitchell to Ed Meese to Janet Reno. Regardless of the administration, the political appointees had respect for the experience and judgment of longtime civil servants.

Under the Bush administration, however, all that changed. Over the last six years, this Justice Department has ignored the advice of its staff and skewed aspects of law enforcement in ways that clearly were intended to influence the outcome of elections.

It has notably shirked its legal responsibility to protect voting rights. From 2001 to 2006, no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African American or Native American voters. U.S. attorneys were told instead to give priority to voter fraud cases, which, when coupled with the strong support for voter ID laws, indicated an intent to depress voter turnout in minority and poor communities. (Read the rest of this story…)

Iran, that disgusting regime, is showing much of the world that it treats prisoners more humanely than the U.S. ...

03 Apr 2007 03:38 pm | Andy McCarthy cites the Geneva Conventions. No, I'm not kidding:

The [Iranian] captors may ask for more, but only gently and must take no for an answer. Leaving aside that torture is independently prohibited by the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment (of which both England and Iran are members), Article 17 elaborates:

No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind.

Unlike prisoners detained by the U.S. in Iraq - some of whom were tortured so badly they died? Memo to Andy: your beloved administration has derided the Geneva Conventions as "quaint". They have sanctioned not gentle questioning, but waterboarding, sleep deprivation and stress positions for prisoners captured in a war, Iraq, where Geneva was allegedly never in doubt. Where were you then? And now Iran is in the dock for giving British prisoners treatment that those in Gitmo and Abu Ghraib can only dream of?

Don't people realize that this is what this episode is partly about? Iran, that disgusting regime, is showing much of the world that it treats prisoners more humanely than the U.S. That's the propaganda coup they are achieving. ...

E-mails among presidential aides have been withheld under the claim of executive privilege.

The discovery of a previously unknown treasure chest of e-mails buried by the Bush administration may prove to be as informative as Nixon's secret White House tapes. |
By Sidney Blumenthal

03/29/07 "Salon" -- - - The rise and fall of the Bush presidency has had four phases: the befuddled period of steady political decline during the president's first nine months; the high tide of hubris from Sept. 11, 2001, through the 2004 election; the self-destructive overreaching to consolidate a one-party state from 2005 to 2006, culminating in the repudiation of the Republican Congress; and, now, the terminal stage, the great unraveling, as the Democratic Congress works to uncover the abuses of the previous six years.

Richard Nixon and George W. Bush both invoked secrecy for national security. Both insisted war -- the war in Vietnam, the war on terror -- justified impunity. And both offered the reason of secrecy to cover political power grabs.

In Watergate, "Deep Throat" counseled that the royal road to the scandal's source was to "follow the money." In the proliferating scandals of the Bush presidency, Congress is searching down a trail of records that did not exist in the time of Nixon: Follow the e-mails.

The discovery of a hitherto unknown treasure-trove of e-mails buried by the Bush White House may prove to be as informative as Nixon's secret White House tapes. Last week the National Journal disclosed that Karl Rove does "about 95 percent" of his e-mails outside the White House system, instead using a Republican National Committee account. What's more, Rove doesn't tap most of his messages on a White House computer, but rather on a BlackBerry provided by the RNC. By this method, Rove and other White House aides evade the legally required archiving of official e-mails. The first glimmer of this dodge appeared in a small item buried in a January 2004 issue of U.S. News & World Report: "'I don't want my E-mail made public,' said one insider. As a result, many aides have shifted to Internet E-mail instead of the White House system. 'It's Yahoo!, baby,' says a Bushie."

The offshoring of White House records via RNC e-mails became apparent when an RNC domain, gwb43.com (referring to George W. Bush, 43rd president), turned up in a batch of e-mails the White House gave to House and Senate committees earlier this month. Rove's deputy, Scott Jennings, former Bush legal counsel Harriet Miers and her deputies strangely had used gwb43.com as an e-mail domain.

The production of these e-mails to Congress was a kind of slip. In its tense negotiations with lawmakers, the White House has steadfastly refused to give Congress e-mails other than those between the White House and the Justice Department or the White House and Congress. E-mails among presidential aides have been withheld under the claim of executive privilege. ...

Gates says Guantanamo trials lack international credibility

Gates says Guantanamo trials lack international credibility | Thu Mar 29, 2:59 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that trials of war on terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba lack international credibility because of the taint of past treatment of detainees. ...

many of the fired prosecutors were investigating high-ranking Republicans ...

Story Time in the Senate | Published: March 30, 2007

In his Senate testimony yesterday, Kyle Sampson, the former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, tried to be a “loyal Bushie,” a term Mr. Sampson used in his infamous e-mail message to describe what he was looking for in United States attorneys. But if Mr. Sampson was trying to fall on his sword, he had horrible aim. In testimony that got so embarrassing for the White House that the Republicans tried to cut it off, Mr. Sampson simply ended up making it clearer than ever that the eight prosecutors were fired for political reasons.

He provided more evidence, also, that the attorney general and other top Justice Department officials were dishonest in their initial statements about the firings.

Mr. Sampson flatly contradicted the attorney general’s claim that he did not participate in the selection of the prosecutors to be fired and never had a conversation about “where things stood.” Mr. Sampson testified that Mr. Gonzales was “aware of this process from the beginning,” and that the two men regularly discussed where things stood. Mr. Sampson also confirmed that Mr. Gonzales was at the Nov. 27 meeting where the selected prosecutors’ fates were sealed. ...
...
The senators questioning Mr. Sampson pointed to a troubling pattern: many of the fired prosecutors were investigating high-ranking Republicans. He was asked if he was aware that the fired United States attorney in Nevada was investigating a Republican governor, that the fired prosecutor in Arkansas was investigating the Republican governor of Missouri, or that the prosecutor in Arizona was investigating two Republican members of Congress. ...

Justice Dep ignored advice of staff and skewed aspects of law enforcement in ways clearly intended to influence the outcome of elections ...

Bush's long history of tilting Justice | By Joseph D. Rich, | March 29, 2007

JOSEPH D. RICH was chief of the voting section in the Justice Department's civil right division from 1999 to 2005. He now works for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

The administration began skewing federal law enforcement before the current U.S. attorney scandal, says a former Department of Justice lawyer.

THE SCANDAL unfolding around the firing of eight U.S. attorneys compels the conclusion that the Bush administration has rewarded loyalty over all else. A destructive pattern of partisan political actions at the Justice Department started long before this incident, however, as those of us who worked in its civil rights division can attest.

I spent more than 35 years in the department enforcing federal civil rights laws — particularly voting rights. Before leaving in 2005, I worked for attorneys general with dramatically different political philosophies — from John Mitchell to Ed Meese to Janet Reno. Regardless of the administration, the political appointees had respect for the experience and judgment of longtime civil servants.

Under the Bush administration, however, all that changed. Over the last six years, this Justice Department has ignored the advice of its staff and skewed aspects of law enforcement in ways that clearly were intended to influence the outcome of elections.

It has notably shirked its legal responsibility to protect voting rights. From 2001 to 2006, no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African American or Native American voters. U.S. attorneys were told instead to give priority to voter fraud cases, which, when coupled with the strong support for voter ID laws, indicated an intent to depress voter turnout in minority and poor communities.

At least two of the recently fired U.S. attorneys, John McKay in Seattle and David C. Iglesias in New Mexico, were targeted largely because they refused to prosecute voting fraud cases that implicated Democrats or voters likely to vote for Democrats.

This pattern also extended to hiring. In March 2006, Bradley Schlozman was appointed interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Mo. Two weeks earlier, the administration was granted the authority to make such indefinite appointments without Senate confirmation. That was too bad: A Senate hearing might have uncovered Schlozman's central role in politicizing the civil rights division during his three-year tenure. ...

The Supreme Court rebuked the Bush administration yesterday for refusing to regulate greenhouse gas emissions ...

High Court Faults EPA Inaction on Emissions | Critics of Bush Stance on Warming Claim Victory | By Robert Barnes and Juliet Eilperin | Washington Post Staff Writers | Tuesday, April 3, 2007; Page A01

The Supreme Court rebuked the Bush administration yesterday for refusing to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, siding with environmentalists in the court's first examination of the phenomenon of global warming.

The court ruled 5 to 4 that the Environmental Protection Agency violated the Clean Air Act by improperly declining to regulate new-vehicle emissions standards to control the pollutants that scientists say contribute to global warming.

"EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority. The agency "identifies nothing suggesting that Congress meant to curtail EPA's power to treat greenhouse gases as air pollutants," the opinion continued. ...

CREW: White House Breaking Records Law? ...

CREW: White House Breaking Records Law? | By Paul Kiel - March 15, 2007, 2:24 PM

A number of readers have pointed out that Karl Rove's deputy at the White House, Scott Jennings, used an outside domain, gwb43.com, for his emails. The domain, it turns out, is owned by the Republican National Committee.

Now Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has sent a letter to House government reform committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) requesting an investigation of whether the White House has been violating the Presidential Records Act -- in an attempt to keep certain correspondence away from prying eyes.

Jennings use of the RNC's email "raises serious questions about whether the White House was trying to deliberately evade its responsibilities under the PRA, which directs the president to take all necessary steps to maintain presidential records to provide a full accounting of all activities during his tenure," says CREW.

And there's evidence that Jennings' use of an outside domain was a pattern in Rove's office. CREW points out that Karl Rove's former assistant Susan Ralston also frequently used outside domains to communicate to her old boss, Jack Abramoff.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that House Democrats are also planning on investigating the White House's use of outside domains for correspondence. Namely:

Democratic congressional aides said they will investigate whether using the private address for government business violated laws against using taxpayer resources for political work or signaled that White House officials considered the firing of U.S. attorneys to be primarily a political issue. Jennings did not return a call to his office seeking a comment.

An RNC spokeswoman told the Post that "As a matter of course, the RNC provides server space and equipment to certain White House personnel in order to assist them with their political efforts."

But the question here is whether there is any line between "political efforts" and official duties in the Bush White House. ...

CREW: White House Breaking Records Law? ...

CREW: White House Breaking Records Law? | By Paul Kiel - March 15, 2007, 2:24 PM

A number of readers have pointed out that Karl Rove's deputy at the White House, Scott Jennings, used an outside domain, gwb43.com, for his emails. The domain, it turns out, is owned by the Republican National Committee.

Now Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has sent a letter to House government reform committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) requesting an investigation of whether the White House has been violating the Presidential Records Act -- in an attempt to keep certain correspondence away from prying eyes.

Jennings use of the RNC's email "raises serious questions about whether the White House was trying to deliberately evade its responsibilities under the PRA, which directs the president to take all necessary steps to maintain presidential records to provide a full accounting of all activities during his tenure," says CREW.

And there's evidence that Jennings' use of an outside domain was a pattern in Rove's office. CREW points out that Karl Rove's former assistant Susan Ralston also frequently used outside domains to communicate to her old boss, Jack Abramoff.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that House Democrats are also planning on investigating the White House's use of outside domains for correspondence. Namely:

Democratic congressional aides said they will investigate whether using the private address for government business violated laws against using taxpayer resources for political work or signaled that White House officials considered the firing of U.S. attorneys to be primarily a political issue. Jennings did not return a call to his office seeking a comment.

An RNC spokeswoman told the Post that "As a matter of course, the RNC provides server space and equipment to certain White House personnel in order to assist them with their political efforts."

But the question here is whether there is any line between "political efforts" and official duties in the Bush White House. ...

Joseph Rich: DOJ Appointees Clearly "Intended To Influence Outcome Of Elections"

Joseph Rich: DOJ Appointees Clearly "Intended To Influence Outcome Of Elections"
by Hunter | Thu Mar 29, 2007 at 06:14:50 PM PDT

Did the Bush administration politicize the administration of justice in order to manipulate elections, depress minority turnout, and demand "voting fraud" prosecutions of Democrats?

Joseph Rich, the former head of the Voting Section of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, says yep. Absolutely:

I spent more than 35 years in the department enforcing federal civil rights laws — particularly voting rights. Before leaving in 2005, I worked for attorneys general with dramatically different political philosophies — from John Mitchell to Ed Meese to Janet Reno. Regardless of the administration, the political appointees had respect for the experience and judgment of longtime civil servants.

Under the Bush administration, however, all that changed. Over the last six years, this Justice Department has ignored the advice of its staff and skewed aspects of law enforcement in ways that clearly were intended to influence the outcome of elections.

Go, read. I find it especially interesting that Rich reports what a wide array of individuals in other governmental agencies have also reported, which were (1) demands from administration appointees that he change his performance evaluations to "include critical comments about those whose recommendations ran counter to the political will of the administration and to improve evaluations of those who were politically favored", and (2) an exodus of solid, high-level career employees from the agency.

In other words, loyalty to party trumped actual competence... and many of the competent people then either left or were forced out. ...

[Bush admin ...] .violated several laws when it changed the rules forest managers must follow when making decisions, without public input

Federal Judge Strikes Down Forest Management Rules | By FELICITY BARRINGER | Published: March 31, 2007

WASHINGTON, March 30 — A federal judge in California on Friday overturned the Bush administration’s revised rules for management of the country’s 155 national forests, saying that the federal Forest Service violated the basic laws ensuring that forest ecosystems have environmental safeguards.

The rules, issued in early 2005, cut back on requirements for environmental reviews and safeguards for wildlife, and limited public participation in the development of management plans for individual forests.

Instead, they broadened the power of forest managers to decide whether mines, logging operations, cellphone towers or other development would be appropriate uses of forest land.

In the ruling Friday, Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton of Federal District Court in San Francisco said the Forest Service had violated several laws when it changed the rules forest managers must follow when making decisions, and did so without consulting the public or considering environmental impact.

The judge issued an injunction forbidding the service from using the rules to make decisions about the national forests and grasslands, which cover 8 percent of the country. ...