The legal analysis, sent late Tuesday to the party’s rules committee, is expected to guide a meeting this weekend where the committee will try to settle one of the most contentious issues remaining in the Democratic presidential race: what to do with delegates from Florida and Michigan, which violated party rules by moving up their primaries ahead of Feb. 5.

Things are not looking rosy for Senator Raise Hell At the Convention Clinton.

Office of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald: Still Open For Business

From Jane:

I’m going to assume this is a bad paraphrase, because the investigation is not closed, not as long as the Office of Special Counsel is still open. I contacted Fitzgerald spokesman Randall Samborn on the matter who said, predictably, “no comment.” But if there was no Office of Special Counsel open, he couldn’t exactly be speaking on the matter, now could he.

Commenter Jim White speculated on that thread that Fitz may have some emails that Rove thinks have been disappeared. Once Marcy has a chance to read McClelland’s book, I will be very interested to hear Marcy’s comments as to possible investigative avenues for Fitzgerald in the leak case, particulary as to Rove and Cheney.

And the Special Counsel does not expire when we hopefully will have a Democratic President take the oath of office January 20, 2009 and that democratic candidate would not be pardoning anyone who is convicted if Fitz chose to indict Rove who has no immunity from the reopening of a grand jury and an indictment what so frigging ever.

Maybe, just maybe, Fitz has privately had it with the pardon crap, and if Fitz waits until Bush is gone, then his work will stick if he indicts Rove. Libby can certainly be forced to testify as can Addington and Cheney who will be a private citizen hunting wingless birds and shooting them at point blank which is his participation in sports events (excellent cardiovascular workout for someone with a pacer).

I haven’t seen Congress do an effective investigation in a time period well before Sandy O’Conner put Bush in the oval office with her 5-4 swing vote.
O’Conner still has an office at the Supreme Court and just hired the Sandy O’Conner hires first blind law clerk who will brief for the active justices

O’Conner is staying pretty active and she is sitting on 3 judge appellate panels now all over the country and firing questions and if you are interested and stay alert, you may be able to attend an oral argument where she is on the panel. That isn’t common, but she’s doing it several times a year. She can pick up the phone and although I’m sure she can’t choose cases, but who knows how they’re really assigned–theoretically by computer but hey–she can pick up the phone and sit on a panel in any circuit as long as she’s alive or they have been asking her to have the experience of pow-wowing and conferencing with a real live Supreme Court justice. As long as they are alive, they still can have input into cases although they don’t formally here them at the Supreme Court but her clerk does write memos and briefs and she can sure as hell influence him since she hired him and probably edit his briefs and memos when assigned (we’ll never know the answer to that).

As to effective oversight by Congress, I have a friend who is running for the Senate (Saxby Chamgliss’ seat) and he has terrific experience in criminal law and on a state judiciary committee for years and if we can get people registered and get the Democratic turnout way up (there are many southern states who have an average of 600,000 black voters not registered and they would not be voting for McCain–they’d be voting Democratic, he would make a splendid replacement for Chambliss.

You won’t see any more Special Prosecutors appointed now, and I really don’t know if Fitz could technically reopen his investigation–I believe he could, and maybe it’s not officially closed.

This is the kind of apointments for investigation though that you’re going to see from Mukasey–he is not going to appoint any special prosecutors for current and future investigations as this administration winds down (probably a condition of his being appointed). Here is an accurate characterization of his appointment for investigatino into the CIA torture tapes case:

Mukasey Seeks to Protect White House and DOJ With Durham “CIA Torture Tape” Appointment

How about Big Brother Does Scottie stay in the House and Survivor Is Scottie staying on the Island?

It looks like they may be deploying their Gannon weapon.

I don’t care if McClelland’s favorite sex partner is a sheep as long as the sheep is consenting–I guarantee you if he is gay he’s thought that through before putting out the book. I don’t know if Scott McC is working now–he may need the money if the book sells significantly and can bring any.

Also I’d take anything Gannon says with a huge grain of salt. He doesn’t exactly have a corner on the credibility market.

McClelland has written another partly derivative book, useful, but none of it is surprising excpt of course to all the Bushies who are “puzzled” my ass. They’re just pzzled that someone has started to spill only a part of their lying deception and moronicity.

They’d better watch it, though. McC may have some ammo of his own to fight that with. I can’t believe he isn’t prepared for this.
Or he could take the hint & back off the more inflammatory criticisms in his book.