Now, this won't come as much as a surprise for anyone who's been following the scandals wrapped around Alberto Gonzalez' Department of Justice, but the DoJ's inspector general (pdf) found that several DOJers repeatedly broke the law "by conducting political litmus tests on candidates for jobs" as immigration justices and prosecutors.
Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson were the main culprits. "What is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?" asked Goodling, regularly, to candidates for career jobs.
As Steve Benen points out, this is the second of four reports being prepared by the DoJ's Inspector General, and that the first report "documented six years of illegal hiring practices" in the department, so it's hardly anything new. Still, it contains some egregious behavior.
First it was Michael Chertoff, now it's rumored that Joe Lieberman will be tapped to be Bush's next Attorney General. I agree that a Lieberman nomination would be a brilliant Bush move, and agree with Marjorie Cohn that it basically halt investigations and put the GOP in charge of the Senate.
I'm not sure it will happen though. For one, Lieberman has been a Democrat and a Senator for a long time. Can he display the proper amount of fealty required of a Bush toadie?
...Lieberman is horrible on national security and soft on oversight. But he isn't a total tool. His confirmation hearings would still involve a lot of demands that he cooperate with congressional oversight...something he is not indifferent to. Would Lieberman promise to enforce congressional subpoenas? Would he have the audacity not to promise?
Don't count on anyone high profile, IMHO. Paul Clement?
So who will Bush tap to replace him? Steve Benen heard a rumor that Michael Chertoff would get the nomination. Benen thinks a Chertoff nod is unlikely because it would be an uphill confirmation battle; on the other hand, wouldn't that be just like Bush to submit a crony who's confirmation would be contentious?
Of course, with Rove gone, now we'll see if the playbook has changed. We'll also see if Republican Congressmen are still into the game, or whether they'll work with Democrats to ensure that the rule of law is more important that party.
And...if we get an honest attorney general, what effect will that have on investigations?
So I'm in Seattle for the weekend and just peeking at the news, but I did see this little item on the front page of the Seattle Times: "Inslee leading effort to impeach Gonzalez."
The good:
[Washington] Rep. Jay Inslee will introduce a resolution today directing the House Judiciary Committee to investigate whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should be impeached.
Five co-sponsors have joined Inslee, D-Bainbridge Island, in backing the resolution....
Inslee and his co-sponsors are all former prosecutors. Inslee prosecuted cases for the city of Selah, Yakima County, while working as a private attorney in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
"Our resolution follows the careful procedure of conducting a thorough investigation before the House would decide on articles of impeachment - a fairness the attorney general did not afford to his fired U.S. attorneys," Inslee said Monday.
Great news. Let's get to work on restoring the public's confidence in government, starting with Alberto Gonzalez, perhaps the worst Attorney General the country's seen, who actively worked to give the White House unprecented powers to imprison and torture anyone it wants without any oversight, and who oversaw the politizitation of the rule of law in the country.
The bad:
Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the ranking Republican on the committee, denounced the resolution Monday night.
"The call by Democrats to impeach Attorney General Gonzales is a misuse of congressional power for purely political reasons and a waste of the American public's money and time," Smith said in a statement.
He said Democrats have chosen "to engage in a politically motivated campaign to slander the Justice Department and undermine the credibility of federal law enforcement."
I don't how these people sleep at night saying sh*t like this. There's no reasonable defense of Gonzalez' performance. Period. At best you could argue he was a moron who had no idea of what was going on in his department. And there's plenty of evidence to suggest that he's much, much worse than that. Smith is putting party over country.
Loads of things happened surrounding the prosecutor purge controversy. Here are some of the highlights:
Congress put more pressure on Gonzo, and by all accounts, he was completely miserable, worse than ever. The kicker was over testimony concerning Gonzo?s attempt to wring intelligence concessions from then-Attorney Gen?l Ashcroft while he was in the ICU, in which Gonzo blames everybody but himself. But the one moment that seems to bode trouble for the Attorney General was his contradictory remarks about Bush?s spying activities. Basically the testimony was so bad that Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) was talking impeachement. A guy can dream, can?t he?
The House Judiciary Committee approved of issuing a contempt of Congress citation against Josh Bolton and Harriet Miers for failing to appear before Congress to give testimony on the attorney firings. A full House vote on the citation needs to occur before it is issued. The DoJ has vowed to ignore the citation, setting up a constitutional confrontation between Congress and the White House. (The Gavel has video of Congressional leaders? comments.)
BooMan is most shocked by the fact that the Committee vote was along strict party lines, noting a similar citation against the Reagan White House was approved of in 1983 by a 413-0 vote: ?Ronald Reagan was not only a Republican president, unlike Bush he was a popular president. Nevertheless, in 1983, not a single Republican member of congress was willing to let him stonewall a congressional committee. Today, not a single Republican on the Judiciary Committee was willing to say the same.?
What?s ironic about Republican opposition is that they don?t want this citation to get to court, for fear of losing it and creating an ?imperial presidency.? Rightie Ed Morrissey has the reasoning behind this stance.
That?s why House Democrats wrote a report used to justify the citation, which alleges ?specific ways that several administration officials may have broken the law during the multiple firings of U.S. attorneys.? According to the report, DoJ and White House officials ?obstructed justice and violated federal statutes that protect civil service employees, prohibit political retaliation against government officials and cover presidential records,? all of which seem clearly substantiated from DoJ and WH testimony in recent weeks, and should bolster Congress? case that criminal wrongdoing actually occurred. At the very least, they?ve got evidence of perjury on Alberto Gonzalez.
First, he's being investigated for possibly trying to influence Monica Goodling's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Second, subpoenas have been issued to compel former Rove aide, Sara Taylor, and former White House counsel, Harriet Miers, to testify about the prosecutor purge.
So. The Senate Republicans blocked a "no confidence" vote in Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. It received only 53 votes, not enough to end a Republican filibuster.
The "no confidence" vote is, of course, a non-binding resolution. Senate Democrats were hoping that such a passed vote would pressure to the Attorney General to finally resign, instead of launching a risky and time-consuming impeachment process.
Republicans, however, spun spun spun their vote of "confidence" in Gonzalez, crying "politics" while obviously supporting "their" man in the name of politics. (Their support certainly can't be based on competency. Or honesty. Or integrity.)
One detail Matt missed in his post about Tester calling for Alberto Gonzalez' resignation was this lovely quote from the Gazette's report:
"...I'm not interested in the U.S. Senate taking politically driven votes of no-confidence," he said.
Compare this quote to what President Bush has to say about a probable no-confidence vote for Alberto Gonzalez:
"He has got my confidence. He has done nothing wrong. There's been enormous amount of attention on him. That there's been no wrongdoing on his part. He has testified in front of Congress. And I, frankly, view what's taking place in Washington today as pure political theater."
You guessed it: the first quote is from Montana's own Senator, Max Baucus.
What's going on here? Is Max receiving faxes from the White House? Why is he mindlessly regurgitating talking points from the Bush administration?
Alberto Gonzalez should be removed from office because he has abused his office to obstruct justice, directed federal prosecutions to support the election of Republican canidates, and he has repeatedly lied to Congress and the American public. If you have respect for the rule of law, you want Gonzalez out of office.
What does it take to warrant dismissal, Max? Does George W. Bush have to give permission first?
The recent testimony by Ashcroft aide, Paul Comey, has continually grown since it was given last week. It turns out now that Senate Democrats are going to try to use the testimony to disbar, or indict, Attorney General Gonzalez:
...Democrats will ask the Texas Bar Association to determine whether Gonzales violated his code of professional responsibility or broke laws by bringing up the NSA program in the hospital in front of Ashcroft's wife, who lacks security clearances.
It's clearly an end-around gambit by Democrats who apparently want to avoid impeaching the administration's pin-headed yes-man, but it also reveals the political difficulties the President is presenting to the nation.
Look, I'm as thrilled as the next guy that the Bush administration is getting into hot water because of all its failed and hubristic plans, the ill-considered wars, the quasi-legal anti-terror programs, the downright illegal domestic spying, and a myriad of corruption and ethics scandals, but all this sudden clamor is also weirdly tiring, even downright frustrating.
Why?
Take today's Washington Post editorial, which expressed a sense of alarm over the illegal program the administration pursued, as revealed in recent testimony by ex-DoJer, James Comey.
