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May 10, 2007
No Recollection

Today Fredo Gonzales will have another American Idol like performance in front of the House Judiciary Committee.

A main point in this audition will be yesterdays revelation that the number of fired prosecutors has grown to nine:

The former U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Mo., Todd P. Graves, said yesterday that he was asked to step down from his job by a senior Justice Department official in January 2006, months before eight other federal prosecutors would be fired by the Bush administration.

…
Graves acknowledged that he had twice during the past few years clashed with Justice’s civil rights division over cases, including a federal lawsuit involving Missouri’s voter rolls that Graves said a Washington Justice official signed off on after he refused to do so. That official, Bradley J. Schlozman, was appointed as interim U.S. attorney to succeed Graves, remaining for a year until the Senate this spring confirmed John Wood for the job.

The man was fired for being too independent and replaced with a Rove operative. Gonzales problem is his earlier chant of only eight fired U.S. attorneys:

In Gonzales’s prepared statement for today’s House hearing, the attorney general refers three times to the resignations of eight prosecutors. In his remarks last month in the Senate, he also referred to "every U.S. attorney who was asked to resign," and then proceeded to name the eight who had previously been identified as having been fired.

The show will be broadcasted on CSPAN. Gonzales is expected to sing the same song he performed in his last appearance, "Recollection." That time he barely avoided to be voted out for singing:

When I’m ridin’ round the world, and I’m doin’ this and I’m signin’ that
And I’m tryin’ to make some friend, who tells me
Baby, better come back maybe next week
‘Cause you see I’m on a losing streak
I can’t get no. Oh, no, no, no. Hey, hey, hey
That’s what I say. I can’t get no, I can’t get no
I can’t get no recollection, no recollection
No recollection, no recollection

Posted by b on May 10, 2007 at 09:11 UTC | Permalink
Comments

Hmm – Unlike the last hearing.
Not so much “No recollection” but that is because there are less questions.
The Republicans on the committee this time have a coordinated tactic to question Fredo on things unrelated to the US Attorney firings and also to justify such firings as normal and justified.
The Democrats are like usual completely uncoordinated in their questioning and hardly ever bring it to the point.
Looks like a waste of time …
Can we have the Goodling testimony please.

Posted by: b | May 10 2007 15:05 utc | 1

I am going to take this moment to make a statement…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 10 2007 15:08 utc | 2

More “No Recollection” in the second than the first part, but the pattern continued.
Two Repub reps spoke of the Attroney General as “the General” – that sounded creepy to me.
My conclusion for now:
– Public house hearings are no relevant venue for any investigative attempts.
– Gonzales is up to his ears in partisan justice manipulation an lying about it.
– Bush can not fire him without more severe damage and will keep him whatever happens.
– The Repub reps have recognized this and have build a Rovian wall of defenese around Gonzo.
– Dems are not organized enough to find a way to break the wall.
– Conyers is overrated.
Maybe giving Goodling immunity will pay off and she’ll spill the beans. We’ll know next week or so. But looking at her resume I have my doubts – she’s a believer.
So I have no idea where this is going. It may be a waste of time while other important legal issues like habeas corpus still are unresolved.

Posted by: b | May 10 2007 19:22 utc | 3

WE THREE DINGS

“People are now asking, if you’re a good U.S. attorney, why aren’t you getting fired?” quipped McKay.

Posted by: dan of steele | May 10 2007 19:28 utc | 4

Investigative reporter Murray Waas writes today: Administration Withheld E-Mails About Rove

The Bush administration has withheld a series of e-mails from Congress showing that senior White House and Justice Department officials worked together to conceal the role of Karl Rove in installing Timothy Griffin, a protégé of Rove’s, as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.
The withheld records show that D. Kyle Sampson, who was then-chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, consulted with White House officials in drafting two letters to Congress that appear to have misrepresented the circumstances of Griffin’s appointment as U.S. attorney and of Rove’s role in supporting Griffin

Question to Repubs: Why is the White House doing a cover up when there is nothing to cover up?

Posted by: b | May 10 2007 19:39 utc | 5

“Again, congresswoman, I’m, I’m, I’m not involved in making decisions about the documenta-, the documents to be provided or not provided.”
~El Generalissimo
From the Murray Waas story:

White House spokesman Tony Fratto denied that the White House was withholding records in the Justice Department’s possession, and he said that Gonzales could make many of them public at any time. “The White House is neither guiding nor directing the Justice Department’s decisions on privileged documents,” Fratto said. “They make those decisions on their own.”

If this weren’t so consequential, I’d guess we are left somewhere between this question (posed by novelist Tom Robbins), and this one.

Posted by: manonfyre | May 10 2007 23:46 utc | 6

Actually, the hearings HAVE served a purpose; the problem is that Congress does not wish to act on the plain implications of the testimony–that Gonzalas should be impeached and removed from office for blatant, gross, and criminal misconduct.

Posted by: Gaianne | May 11 2007 3:59 utc | 7

New revelation from McClatchy: White House sought investigations of voter fraud allegations before elections

Only weeks before last year’s pivotal midterm elections, the White House urged the Justice Department to pursue voter-fraud allegations against Democrats in three battleground states, a high-ranking Justice official has told congressional investigators.
In two instances in October 2006, President Bush’s political adviser, Karl Rove, or his deputies passed the allegations on to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ then-chief of staff, Kyle Sampson.
Sampson tapped Gonzales aide Matthew Friedrich, who’d just left his post as chief of staff of the criminal division. In the first case, Friedrich agreed to find out whether Justice officials knew of “rampant” voter fraud or “lax” enforcement in parts of New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and report back.
But Friedrich declined to pursue a related matter from Wisconsin, he told congressional investigators, because an inquiry so close to an election could inappropriately sway voting results. Friedrich decided not to pass the matter on to the criminal division for investigation, even though Sampson gave him a 30-page report prepared by Republican activists that made claims of voting fraud.

Does the answer of Friedrich make sense?
If he wouldn’t persue on investigation shortly before election day, why wouldn’t the same reason apply to the investigations he did persue?

Posted by: b | May 11 2007 5:20 utc | 8

Very well written – Alberto Gonzales, Zen Master

Then Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., follows up with one of the best queries of the day: “If you don’t know who put Iglesias on the list, how do you know the president or the vice president didn’t?”
Long silence. Pause. “They wouldn’t do that,” hems Gonzales. “The White House has said publicly that it was not involved in adding or deleting people from the list.” Someone needs to tell that to Kyle Sampson. And as for Gonzales, he has made himself immortal by merely willing himself to be so. That must be what accounts for his Zenlike state today. It’s an ingenious strategy. Instead of letting the president throw him under the bus to protect Karl Rove, Gonzales just lies down in the road, then giggles as the bus runs over his head.

Posted by: b | May 11 2007 17:19 utc | 9

GONZALES EMBARRASSED AT HARVARD REUNION

Cambridge, Mass. – Alberto Gonzales was confronted by student protesters and forced to leave through a back door on Saturday during a visit to Harvard Law School for his 25th reunion…
The Attorney General was on campus, unannounced to students, to deliver a lunchtime speech. But word quickly spread that a suspicious motorcade had been spotted by the campus center, and by the time Gonzales and his fellow classmates assembled on the law library steps for their class photo, a group of current students were there to greet him, having donned black hoods and orange jumpsuits. As the photographer told the class of 1982 to smile and say “cheese,” the students yelled out that saying “torture,” “resign” or “I don’t recall” might be more appropriate.
At a time when many in the nation are calling for Gonzales to resign, one third-year student managed to communicate the mood of his own alma mater directly to Gonzales. While the Attorney General’s security detail kept protestors at bay and the photographer prepared the class photo, she slipped though the law library’s front doors and approached Gonzales from behind. “On behalf of many other Harvard Law students,” she said, “I’d like to tell you that we are ashamed to have you as an alumnus of this school. And we’re glad you’re here to be able to tell you that.” Gonzales thanked the student and offered to shake her hand, but was refused. After the class photo was taken, several of the Attorney General’s classmates clapped and approached the protesting students to thank them for their efforts.
Following the group photo, Gonzales ducked into the library to take a stroll around the main reading room, which, on the weekend before final exams, was full of students going over their notes. When the protestors caught up with Gonzales, the cavernous reading room, ordinarily a place of hushed whispers, echoed with chants of “shame” and “resign.” Gonzales was quickly whisked down a back staircase, out a basement emergency exit and into a waiting SUV. As the motorcade pulled off from in front of historic Austin Hall, Thomas Becker, a second-year law student, stood in an orange jumpsuit and black hood, waving goodbye. When the cars were out of sight, Becker pulled off his hood, smiled, and said “good riddance.”

Posted by: John Francis Lee | May 11 2007 21:31 utc | 10

A snippet from a piece on how Goodling pushed wingnuts into the DOJ:
Colleagues Cite Partisan Focus by Justice Official

Deeply religious and politically conservative, Ms. Goodling seemed to believe that part of her job was to bring people with similar values into the Justice Department, several former colleagues said.
She joined the department in the press office. Soon after, two lawyers said, Ms. Goodling complained that staff members in Puerto Rico had used rap music in a public service announcement intended to discourage gun crime.
“That is just outrageous,” she told one department lawyer. “How could they use government money for an ad that featured rap music? That kind of music glorifies violence.”

So narrowminded that she didn’t even understand a simple marketing technic …

Posted by: b | May 12 2007 5:47 utc | 11

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