How would you feel?

If you were a member of a group universally acknowleged to be the best, smartest and most ethical lawyers in the world, and with the change of an administration, the organization of which you were proud, began to be destroyed from within, by fourth-rate duplicious hacks of which there seems to be no end.

What would you do?
Scott Horton at No Comment, on an interview with such a person.

The Department of Justice had, for decades, a reputation for attracting the brightest and most dedicated career public servants from law schools and law firms. Some of the most capable and most ethically demanding lawyers I have ever known went to the Justice Department or worked there. How must those people feel today? Isn't the answer obvious?

If you're having any doubts on that front, the current issue of Findlaw has a fascinating interview with the just-retired director of the Office of Information and Privacy at the Department of Justice, Daniel J. Metcalfe. He began serving the Department 35 years ago in the Nixon Administration. How does he assess the current situation?

Under Gonzales, though, almost immediately from the time of his arrival in February 2005, this changed quite noticeably. First, there was extraordinary turnover in the political ranks, including the majority of even Justice's highest-level appointees. It was reminiscent of the turnover from the second Reagan administration to the first Bush administration in 1989, only more so. Second, the atmosphere was palpably different, in ways both large and small. One need not have had to be terribly sophisticated to notice that when Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey left the department in August 2005 his departure was quite abrupt, and that his large farewell party was attended by neither Gonzales nor (as best as could be seen) anyone else on the AG's personal staff.

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There now appears to be a trail through Gonzales, through Rove and directly to Dubya...

Josh Marshal at Talking Points Memo has a bunch of things to consider.
First there is the McClatchy report linking Bush directly to these politically inept maneuvers.

...Sunday, the Albuquerque Journal reported that Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., told Gonzales in the spring of 2006 that he wanted New Mexico U.S. attorney David Iglesias dismissed, and that Gonzales refused. The newspaper said that Domenici later made the same case to White House adviser Karl Rove and spoke to President Bush about it after the November election, but before the attorney firings were announced on Dec. 7. Iglesias was among those fired.

David Kurtz at TPM goes back over quotes from Bush and his mouthpieces

A TPM reader asks this question.

...Implicit in all the coverage is the assumption—by Democrats and Republicans alike—that the Attorney General is going up to Capitol Hill to lie. As far as I can tell, this is a universal assumption. The Republicans are rooting for Mr. Gonzales to be successful in his perjury, to tell a coherent story that his enemies cannot break down. The Democrats are rooting the other way, off course. They’re hoping that their ace interrogators will be able to shoot enough holes in Mr. Gonzales’ story that they can destroy his credibility. But nobody seems to find it shocking or tragic that the Attorney General of the United States is going to lie to congress. . . .

(Emphasis mine)

Also read this post and this one too.

All roads lead through Carlos, and on up.

An analysis of the cesspool at DOJ and on up by Christy Hardin Smith at Firedoglake. Do yourself a favor and take a chill pill before you follow the links.

What do you get when you fill the government with people whose primary interest is in getting ahead — and not in fulfilling their job obligations for the long-term benefit of the American public? You get a self-dealing mess:

Actually, I began earlier, in the first Nixon administration, as a college intern in 1971. But I was there again in the Watergate era, when I worked in part of the Attorney General's Office during my first year of law school in 1973-1974, and then continuously as a trial attorney and office director for nearly 30 years. That adds up to more than a dozen attorneys general, including Ed Meese as well as John Mitchell, and I used to think that they had politicized the department more than anyone could or should. But nothing compares to the past two years under Alberto Gonzales.

Read it all.

Amid the propping-up of the Bush fiasco, can't we expect a little regard for the wellfare of the country?

Guess not.

Or is even the slightest bit of integrity and independence too much to ask from Republican members of Congress these days? Have we just all decided that expecting more from them — expecting some sense of fiduciary duty to the public's interest or commitment to something higher than their own power grab — is just an exercise in futility? Here's to a whole lot more sunshine…on the entire festering mess.

Read the post

Rove's emails lost! Well, isn't that special?

The White(wash) House has 'lost' lots, 'n lots of those inconvenient emails they have been sending on private accounts, in contempt of laws concerning official documents.
Hmmm.
Contempt, that has a ring to it!

From The Washinton Post

The White House acknowledged yesterday that e-mails dealing with official government business may have been lost because they were improperly sent through private accounts intended to be used for political activities. Democrats have been seeking such missives as part of an investigation into the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

Administration officials said they could offer no estimate of how many e-mails were lost but indicated that some may involve messages from White House senior adviser Karl Rove, whose role in the firings has been under scrutiny by congressional Democrats.

Read On...

Everywhere you look, Sleeper Cells, Republican Pod people.

Kango X at Daily Kos:

How deep are we in it over the politicization of the Justice Department (and probably others) under the Bush "administration?"

Way deep.

This is a planned disaster. A burning of all bridges and a scorching of all escape routes. In other words, the routine Republican m.o.: destroy all paths back to the status quo, so that even if our theories don't pan out, nobody can pull them out by the roots -- they can only tinker with the ruins.

[...]

I wrote earlier about this unfolding scandal that Bush, Rove and Gonzales have now done for the prosecution of public corruption what they've done for impeachment. That is, just as they've made it conventional wisdom to immediately reject the idea of impeachment out of hand as "partisan revenge for Clinton," or "political tit for tat," now so too will the investigation of public corruption cases be subject to such summary dismissal.

The long term effects of this scandal are incalculable. At a time when Republicans are accused of engaging in rampant and systematic public corruption, Rove, Bush and Gonzales have succeeded in making corruption investigations into the same sort of partisan joke that Republicans made impeachment. And as their crimes come to light in the closing days of their "administration" and into the next, they may well have made it impossible for a Democratic successor to actually pursue justice on behalf of the American people, since any such effort will undoubtedly -- and with a lack of shame that shocks the conscience -- be labeled as "partisan revenge."

More and Here Also see

The 'Rule Of Karl' must end!

Christy Hardin Smith at Firedoglake

When the Founding Fathers of our nation established a government of the people, by the people and for the people, with built-in provisions for the protection of the rule of law against the tyranny of the majority through a separation of powers into three governmental branches: executive, legislative and judiciary, they failed to count on one thing: the Rule of Karl. In reading through the massive document dump of e-mails from the USAs firings and the DoJ tap dance between Gonzales and the Bush White House, the fingerprints of Karl Rove are everywhere, carefully concealed behind having other people do the actual, written e-mailing so that his hands (and signature line) stay off the direct line of communication — but everywhere nonetheless.

[...]

Politics is not supposed to be the foremost consideration in judicial action. In fact, it is supposed to be quite far down the list, if there at all, in terms of the factors in play for charging decisions. The fact that the Bush Administration has attempted to so pervert the legal system as to skew it for its own political gain is appalling enough. But that they would fire US Attorneys for doing their jobs — and doing them well, in uncovering corrupt acts of politicians regardless of party, or for making charging decisions outside the realm of political vendetta — is unconscionable.

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