This has been a bad week for political messaging from Montana's Senators. First, they wanted to make sure everyone understood that a bill to withdraw from Iraq was anti-troop. Then, Max Baucus accused Senate leadership contemplating a "no-confidence" vote regarding embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales of engaging in political games. Now I get a press release explaining that they just proudly voted against "amnesty" for undocumented immigrants.
Fine -- but what's your solution, Max and Jon? Mass deportation? Round 'em up at gunpoint?
I'm no huge fan of the immigration bill -- check out the Drum Major Institute for more on why a progressive might have problems -- but raising the specter of "amnesty" for "illegal aliens" is straight out of a rightwing, xenophobic playbook.
The more we push undocumented immigrants underground, the more we encourage a festering underground economy in our own country -- an economy that directly undermines American workers.
AmTrak. The study for a southern line through Montana -- Missoula->Helena->Bozeman->Billings -- is off the table, apparently. I thought the train was a pretty cool idea. Most people I talked to really liked it as well. People travel less in Montana in the winter because of the conditions -- trains could get people around to see their families.
The Tax Gap. One in six tax dollars owed isn't being ponied up. Meanwhile, the IRS is increasing enforcement among the middle-class, but laying off auditors who focus on the super-wealthy. Max Baucus laid into the Administration over it. The Administration's response? Exactly what you'd expect. They don't have the balls to say that they think it is good public policy to give the super-rich whatever they want, so they hem and haw and say an 85% compliance rate is good. As Jay writes, if that's good enough, maybe the rest of us will start complying with 85% of our taxes, too.
Gonzales Contradicts Mercer. AG Gonzales' testimony shed some light on Bill Mercer's involvement in Purgegate and on Mercer's recent closed door testimony. Mercer is apparently one of three Justice officials who said that Gonzales was involved in discussions related to the purge. Both Sens. Pat Leahy (D-VT) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) laid into the Attorney General. The question is quickly becoming When, not Whether, this guy will resign.
Interestingly, it appears at least part of the frustration by the Republicans who moved to purge was that the prosecutors in question weren't doing "enough" to "fight" voter "fraud." Why all the "scare quotes"? Because, as Josh Marshall explains, voter fraud is basically a specter, a rightwing talking point that rarely has even a tenuous connection in reality. The lack of prosecution, in fact, might just be a sign of a lack of evidence.
I raise this because some similar arguments are now being made for changing state law in Montana, especially regarding Election Day registration.
What's the problem here? Well, the big problem is that a lot of the people on the right have come to believe their own bullshit. That's a dangerous place to be.
I thought that there was more to this story when I wrote it up some time ago. Turns out, it is not that there is more to it, just more of the same from this administration. Not a week after Scooter Libby is found guilty of lying to protect the administration, we find out that Alberto Gonzales has been lying, too.
Last October, President Bush spoke with Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to pass along concerns by Republicans that some prosecutors were not aggressively addressing voter fraud
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The president did not call for the removal of any specific United States attorneys, said Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman.
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But Ms Perino disclosed that White House officials had consulted with the Justice Department in preparing the list of United States attorneys who would be removed.
Within a few weeks of the president's comments to the attorney general, the Justice Department forced out seven prosecutors.
Previously, the White House had said that Mr. Bush's aides approved the list of prosecutors only after it was compiled.
The role of the president and his advisers in the prosecutor shakeup is likely to intensify calls by Congress for an investigation. It is the worst crisis of Mr. Gonzales's tenure and provoked charges that the dismissals were a political purge threatening the historical independence of the Justice Department.
The idea of dismissing federal prosecutors originated in the White House more than a year earlier, White House and Justice officials said Monday.
No bueno. Bear in mind that Alberto Gonzales denied any political involvement, under oath. These folks are lying to the press in a big way. They are lying to the American people in a big way. On the heels of one perjury probe, they seem to be anxious for another.
I will try to leave the other major lies out of this, but for being an administration so brazen in values and ensconced at the foot of the Lord, they sure do lie an awful lot.
