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.

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I mentioned the SciFi bumper on unraveling the whole man...

And how in Bush (League) land, that hair is Alberto Gonzales.

Here's more by Phoenix Woman at Firedoglake

I'm beginning to wonder if the US Attorney firing/force-out scandal may well be the Grand Unifying Scandal that connects most if not all of the other Bush scandals.

Like a loose bit of yarn on a sweater, pulling on it tugs at a whole bunch of other things involving the Bush Junta's extreme politicization of the Justice Department — not to mention the rest of the Federal government – and the extreme efforts made by the top players to avoid facing any kind of penalties for wrongdoing.

The rest (of the story)

The imperial 'We'. If you haven't read the snark on shrub's hissy fit, I mean, press conference, read this.

Watertiger at Firedoglake

[W]e will not go along with a partisan fishing expedition aimed at honorable public servants. . . .

Listen, first of all, these U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President. I named them all. . . . They serve at our pleasure. . . . And I repeat, we would like people to hear the truth.

– G.W. Bush, 3/20/07

What happens when the grandiose fantasies of a megalomaniacal, emotionally palsied fraud finally come crashing through the plate glass window of reality? Well, for one thing, that "good ol' boy you'd wanna have a beer with" facade drops faster than a schoolgirl's knickers at a Justin Timberlake concert. After watching the clips of Bush's performances last week, I was reminded of a line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail: "Ooh, a king? Well, I didn't vote for you!"

What we saw last week was the real Bush: imperious, contemptuous, rigid with thin-lipped anger, one straightjacket lace shy of a full-blown meltdown on national television after Congress personally affronted him (not once, but TWICE!) by announcing that they were no longer playing by his arbitrary, self-serving rules. The AUDACITY!

There is MUCH more

You know that SciFi channel bumper? Where the guy starts pulling the hair out of his head?

That hair is AG Gonzales. He is the thread that will unravel Bushco.
He MUST be impeached.
Arianna at Hufffington

If the president continues trying to run out the clock on this scandal, Congress should immediately begin impeachment proceedings against Alberto Gonzales. It's the quickest way to the truth.

Appearing on CNN's Late Edition, Joe DiGenova said that if Congress insists on issuing subpoenas, the White House will surely contest them, and the ensuing litigation will last until the end of Bush's term. DiGenova's point was that Congress should go ahead and compromise, but my takeaway was just the opposite: if Bush's game is to stall, Congress should play the impeachment card since, as Robert Kuttner points out, "an impeachment inquiry could be completed in a matter of months."

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More on the idea of going for the low hanging fruit.

From a republi-con Blog... AG AG needs to go

The Captain at the Captain's Quarters:

...Gonzales made himself the target here with what looks like blatant deception. I don't think we do ourselves any good by defending the serially changing stories coming out of Gonzales' inept administration at Justice. One cannot support an Attorney General who misleads Congress, allows his staffers to mislead Congress, and deceives the American people, regardless of whether an R or a D follows his name or the majority control of Congress.

[...]At this point, the notion that Bush has to retain Gonzales to protect himself and Republicans in general is starting to become absurd. Gonzales inflicted most of this damage on the administration himself, and the longer he remains, the more damage he will do. As Jonah said, it's hard to find a worse example of self-inflicted damage outside of circus tents.

Gonzales' dismissal/resignation would not do any more damage to Republicans than has already occurred. If we have to defend incompetents and/or deceivers as critical to the Republican cause, then be prepared for a disastrous 2008. Offering Clintonian word-parsing as a defense does nothing to help the cause of conservatism.

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Bush wants it both ways in the AG vs USAs mess

Dubya wants to claim executive privilege over something he claims not to know about.
Anonymous Liberal at Crooks and Liars

President Bush is in a real bind. The circumstances surrounding the firing of eight United States Attorneys reek so badly of crass partisan politics that the President's advisers are trying very hard to distance him as much as possible from the decision-making process. Hence, this from Tony Snow:

MR. SNOW: The President has no recollection of this ever being raised with him. . . .

Q Just to follow, did you say, again for the record, that the President has no recollection of ever being asked about any of this?

MR. SNOW: Yes, the removal — yes, that is correct.

Indeed, Snow went as far as to assert that this was "a decision that was made at the U.S. Department of Justice."

Here's the problem, though. As Marty Lederman points out, the relevant statute–28 U.S.C. 541(c)–vests the power to remove U.S. Attorneys with the president ("Each United States attorney is subject to removal by the President.") As we've repeatedly been told, U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President–not the pleasure of the Attorney General (and certainly not the pleasure of the Attorney General's chief of staff). The decision to fire a U.S. Attorney–much less eight of them–is unquestionably one for the president to make, so if President Bush was truly out of the loop on this, that's a problem in and of itself.

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Asked about the US Attorneys uproar 'Turd Blossom' said Clinton did it too.

Oh, really? Here are some facts, instead of spin.
Glenn Greenwald at Salon:

...even Rush Limbaugh, on the March 23, 1993 broadcast of his television show, acknowledged that the full-scale replacement of all U.S. attorneys at the start of an administration is routine:

JANET RENO (US Attorney General): I haven't asked for Stephens' resignation. I've asked for the resignation of all the US attorneys as part of an orderly transfer to a new administration, so that the new administration can choose its US attorneys which it re--thinks is absolutely integral to the Department of Justice ought--and based on what we think the qualifications for US attorney should be.

LIMBAUGH: Now this happens. She's right. New administrations just come in and get rid of all the US attorneys.

The beginning of the Clinton administration was really the birth of the all-out right-wing filth and noise machine, and -- working with Republican Congressional leaders -- it attempted to convert a completely routine decision by the Clinton administration to replace all U.S. attorneys into some sort of explosive corruption scandal. And yet these are the same people, and the same faction, which now insists that there is absolutely nothing wrong with firing U.S. attorneys at any time and that the President has the unfettered right to do so -- even in the unprecedented circumstance of singling prosecutors out and replacing them in the middle of the President's term.

It's literally the same people who defend President Bush today by saying the exact opposite of what they said in 1993. Yes, that is extremely common for them to do. And yes, there is nothing surprising about it. But it is still worth noting, particularly when the dishonesty is as glaring and inescapable as it is in this case.

more here.

Also see this from Diane Feinstein

and "All roads lead to Rove" -- By Sidney Blumenthal

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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