Thanks ew.

digg

Finally IG Glenn Fine seems to be ready to open the floodgate. More reports to follow soon, I fervently hope. What I’ve read so far is both disgusting & horrifying. Over @ FDL mothership CHS points out that files were “disappeared” within DOJ before FIne & CO could even get to them for the investigation.

White House - no email
DOJ- no personnel docs

At what point can you get people for destruction of evidence when they’ve been thorough with the destruction and keep the liars lying through RICO tactics?

While Coughlin said he did not recall any details concerning the specific candidate with liberal affiliations, he recalled that he recommended the candidate with conservative affiliations because the candidate had received a strong recommendation from a previous internship with the Criminal Division and not because of the candidate’s ideological affiliations.

Wow. What an excellent line of bullshit. I may have to cross-stitch that onto a pillow.

Off-topic a bit, but did anybody notice the effort that the Bushies are putting out to spin yesterday’s attempt to rewrite the evidence in the Guantanamo cases? They are all talking about adding evidence to support their cases, but what is really going on is an attempt to REMOVE evidence from the records of the cases before they go before a civilian judge, so that no opening can be made to challenge conditions of confinement. Somebody smarter than me needs to be looking at this.

Ew Thanks for all you do

In Elston’s defense, I think exclamation points should be a pet peeve of everyone.

dugg

Cockroaches all, each and every one.

Here’s the one that I consider to be the most damning:

For example, Fridman recalled that one candidate was at the top of his class at Harvard Law School and was fluent in Arabic. McDonald’s written notations indicated that she had concerns about the candidate because he was a member of the Council on American Islamic Relations and that she had placed the application in the questionable pile. Fridman said he wrote on the application that this candidate was at the top of his class at Harvard and was exactly the type of person DOJ needed.

We are not in the club.
George Carlin (George was/is one of my Gurus)

“You have no choice, you have owners”
You have to be asleep to have The American Dream
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ4SSvVbhLw

Andrew Hruska is the very woirst person to be dealing from inside the DOJ dealing with corporate crime…and is hardly a person that should be involved in “deselecting” people based upon articles they had written as undergraduates. Take a look at his own writings as an apologist for corporations!

Metropolitan Corporate Counsel “Why Compliance Doesn’t Work”
Wall Street Journal Online “Debating the Government’s War on Corporate Crime”
New York Law Journal “What’s Really Going On in Corporate Charging Decisions?”

After leaving the DOJ, Hruska defended major financial service and industrial companies against enforcement investigations by the his former Federal employer, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern and Eastern Districts of NY, the NY State Attorney General, the NY County DA’s office, the SEC, the IRS, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control, the NY Federal Reserve Bank, the U.S. Department of Labor and the NYSE.

Hruska represented securities firms, commercial banks, insurance companies and brokers, hedge funds, and major industrial companies concerning criminal and civil enforcement in the areas of securities, antitrust, false claims, foreign corrupt practices, taxation, international trade sanctions, and immigration restrictions. He defended several international companies in Foreign Corrupt Practices Act investigations. He defended medical device manufacturer, Guidant Corporation, against a civil fraud suit brought by the NY Attorney General. He counselled an accounting firm and a major pharmaceutical against claims of fraudulent activity in healthcare insurance activity.

Interestingly, Hruska served as the Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, overseeing both the criminal and civil divisions, so many of his actions involve former employees and colleagues, and appearing before judges that he formerly worked as a prosecutor. He was hired quickly by the same corporate sectors that he was prosecuting just months before.

Clearly, she/he’d have posed serious threat to the information contamination carried out by the Ledeen, Franklin, Hadley, Cambone, Luti, Perle, Wolfowitz, Chertoff, Fisher, etc cabal.

Anyone fluent in Arabic would rapidly have recognized things seriously amiss in DoJ.

No doubt some corporate headhunter somewhere should be sending a very large bouquet to thank these fools for ensuring that a corporation could snap up such a promising young prospect, since government service wasn’t an option.

Only when you have a Congress with the spine to pursue it.

This has been another episode of ’simple answers to simple questions’.

Dougy Feith didn’t like fluent Arabic speakers, either. Underlings who know too much are too likely to point out the boss is incompetent, his policies won’t do what s/he publicly claims they’ll do, and that s/he has completely missed the point of a conversation.

Amazing what having an anti-intellectual, non-reader, C-student with a morbid fear of accountability and an exaggerated sense of entitlement can do to dumb down the entire federal government. It’s like having a bank president who can’t count, and hates numbers, meetings and selling things to people they don’t need and can’t afford. Not much to do besides bicycle, hack at golf and leave everything but the speechifying to the hired help.

It will take two presidential terms to course-correct the brain drain, corruption, de-unionization and ill-thought out outsourcing of this one administration. No wonder the have mores are so satisfied, and so sure none of them will ever see the inside of a jail cell.

Esther Slater McDonald graduated from Pensacola Christian College (an Independent Baptist institution that is not accredited and very fundamentalist). She got her law degree from Notre Dame.

I guess that explains why Monica Goodling liked her.

I think that’s exactly right. No one with the relevant expertise in Arabic or Islamic thought, culture and politics was allowed near our senior administration officials. Except displaced local warlords and shady, expatriate bidnessmen with a shed full of axes to grind and plenty of reason to lie, cheat and steal for their own betterment.

The American taxpayer wasn’t just sold a horse with no teeth. It has no legs or tail, either, and no matter how many quarters you endlessly drop in its box, it won’t move up or down.

If the politically correct people were hired under a cloud, can their employment status be reviewed within Civil Service SOP? As stated sometime ago, many

Corrected post:

If the politically correct people were hired under a cloud, can their employment status be reviewed within Civil Service SOP? As stated sometime ago, many appointees are being converted to full time positions so the Federalists/Bush ideology can remain.

Interesting and a little surprising, to me anyway, that there appear to be noticeably more “liberal” applicants than “conservative” ones. I wonder if that is really the case, or if that determination itself is profoundly skewed in such a manner that when they later claim they hired “equal numbers from each category” they were really fudging because even the “liberals” they chose were pretty conservative. Something seems wacked out about this to me.

You’re a lawyer, bmaz.

Of the folks you went to law school with, how many of the liberals went into something like public service or some other lower paying specialty?

ANd the conservatives? Govt lawyers get paid shite compared to what their colleagues get paid, right?

my

sorry, runaway trackball.

meant to write:
My question exactly. IIRC previous discussions here, the hirers are the Hatch Act violaters and the hirees are protected by it. Indirect means will be needed to encourage them to leave, the very ones uses against career liberals who are now gone: transfers, retraining, etc.

But IANAL. Bmaz, what do you think?

The more I read about the abominations in the Bush administration, the sicker I get. I never recall political affiliation being mentioned once in the hundreds of personnel decisions I participated in during my career. But then again the Air Force I served in doesn’t sound like the current one either.

How many more days (KO) until we are rid of these people.

BSRH @ 22 was a reply to Bushie@19 and not to herself.

Only the WaPoo would consider it news that the Bush inJustice Department illegally uses political factors in making career hires. Only they would miss that George Bush has done this throughout the entire federal government.

George and Dick have remade the federal government into their vision of the worst CEO-centric excesses of the private sector. They’ve given us a gutless board asleep at their board meetings (Congress), hired salesmen to audit themselves (the judiciary), and outsourced the company’s crown jewels (warmaking, intelligence gathering, tax collection, ad nauseum). And they’re walking away with their bonuses intact (FISA hoovering and immunity).

They have made real Ronald Reagan’s fantasy misdescription of the federal government: The nine most dangerous words in the English language are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Correctly translated, it means I ruined your government through my lies, incompetence and outsourcing, and by allowing the private sector to regulate in their interest instead of yours, all on your dime. Now I’m goin’ home and you can’t touch me. Naah.

Oh, generally, that is absolutely right. But this is an honors program to which even the top conservative people you describe would be attracted in an administration that was notorious for taking care of their own. The corollary is that a lot of people of my ilk would not have gone near them with a ten foot pole even if in normal times they would have. So, it is that kind of adjusted context I posited that though. Not saying I am right, just musing.

On a more striking note: Laura Rozen reports (via Roll Call but no link);

Former Bush Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge busted by the Justice Department for failing to register for two years for lobbying for Albania, at $40k a month

Wow. I am not sure whether that removes him from McCain’s Veep list or puts him at the top.

Was the Air Force Academy in your day a haven for Christian fundamentalists?

Obama just won PA, I guess.

I wonder if Ridge had any ties to the weapons laundering going through Albania…?

No, but the misogyny was pretty rampant.

Their notion of “liberal” can be pretty elastic, though. There is that Wharton graduate on p. 89: though pretty clearly conservative he was “deselected” for having “an open mind” and belonging to both the ACS and the Federalist Society.

Nor

Only the WaPoo

also NYetimes.

And why was Bush there again last year?

That was Laura’s question too; and a darn good one from both of you. That is pretty much a million dollars for Ridge in two years. Not chump change. On the scale of Goops, Ridge didn’t seem like that bad of a guy on a personal level. Speaking of Pa. why is Rendell never substantively mentioned for VP for Obama?

The news about Ridge’s failing to register as a foreign agent is surprising. He could not have missed the requirement, certainly not when he was paid nearly half a million a year for it. The exceptionalism of the Bushies is numbing. Guess we’ll need a new batch of prosecutors who aren’t at the bottom of their Regent “Law” School class.

I think your comment about self-selection for jobs in this administration is right. Few progressives would have chosen to work for this administration, though I would concede that might be less true of recent graduates who hadn’t yet spent their “two years before the mast” in business or government. So they left/right applicant pool would have been seriously skewed to the right.

Just as Karl Rove utilized every resource of the federal government to promote Bush and, secondarily, GOP interests, he missed no one - not the Cabinet member, the park service police officer or the intelligence analyst - who spoke out of turn. Retribution was swift and merciless. Sadly for democracy, Rove has now turned his talents to “preserving” the digital legacy of Bush’s regime, thus giving us a new definition of black hole.

Did you hear the program about the book called “The Family” on the Diane Rehm show this morning. The books is about the “avante garde fundamentalist”, the “biblical capitalist” who started and continue to according to the author have a great deal of control on our country’s focus and who attend the “National Prayer Breakfast”

This was a frightening story.
“The Family”

11:00Jeff Sharlet: “The Family” (Harper)

It’s one of the most influential and least well known organizations in the country. The Family, also known as The Fellowship, consider themselves followers of Christ, and individuals responsible for changing the the world. An in
http://wamu.org/programs/dr/08/06/24.php#20950

Rather amusing, isn’t it, that Ridge “forgot” to register although working for one of the biggest lobbying firms, for a client who coincidentally is home to a weapons dealer moving Chinese weapons to a questionable firm iin Florida.

This is some of the “worse-than-Iran-Contra” stuff right here.

I didn’t listen to Diane Rehm this morning, but have heard of this Fellowship and the National Prayer Breakfast. Hillary Clinton, I believe, used it as a way of establishing her bipartisan credibility once in the Senate. Something tells me a Mediterranean Jewish village peasant would think them all followers of Caesar and not the Word.

reply @34,

I believe Gov. Rendell came out early in support for Sen. Clinton. It may take a little while for the Dem’s to vet him properly if they were to consider him.

Also, having him on the ticket could endanger PA. He has the reputation of being very liberal and could hurt any non-committed votes.

Excellent point. Large DC firms have adminstrative staff who attend to such things for their rainmakers: eg, keeping current their bar memberships and affiliations. Registering them as an agent for a foreign government would be routine for them.

If it was not done for Ridge’s work for Albania - and neither he nor his firm would have missed the half million a year from a single client - something is seriously amiss. That this - and the timing of its exposure - coincides with the Albania/China/Pentagon arms procurement scandal is not likely to be coincidental.

Perhaps the payback cycle has begun, and the mistreated and shunted aside are beginning with collateral figures like Ridge, who, though mildly competent (if a laughingstock for his politically motivated, color-coded “alerts”), was not among the administration’s worst of the worst.

I think he’s among the B class of potential candidates, but he has a diahrea of the mouth problem, which is totally not Obama’s style.

God forbid we piss off any of those freaking “uncommitteds”, that wishy washy undefined less than 10% that ought to properly control everything we do. And, furthermore, yes, the mere mention of Rendell being a “liberal” ought to forestall any consideration of him. How did he slide into office in Pennsylvania all those times with such a mark of satan attached to him? Oh my. Hey, just exactly what is a liberal anyway since you brought it up?

Frightening and enlightening all rolled into one. Amazing how these “elite fundamentalist” “biblical capitalist” hide behind the “alleged” teachings of Jesus Christ. Aye yi yi

Jesus would be turning over the tables at that National Prayer Breakfast

Now that i accept and can understand. I kind of like the guy though.

And Pretzel @39, I did not mean that sharp response necessarily at you, I am just sick and tired in general of the timidity of Democrats and the willingness to allow themselves to be framed in the denigrating false lights painted by Republicans. We just keep accepting and adopting the playing field provided by the opposition instead of seizing the ground ourselves. The more you do that the deeper ingrained and self perpetuating it becomes. It has to stop.

Rendell did come out early for Hillary. Supposedly he was one of the first to say to her “it’s over’

On the off chance you’re not familiar with it, here’s a link to Mikey Weinstein’s Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Weinstein’s book is a scary read.

No offense taken,

As for Gov. Rendell, I’ve been a staunch supporter of his since his days as Mayor of Philadelphia. He has been very progressive in enacting legislation that has helped many Pennsylvanians, especially the elderly and children. I work for an Area Agency on Aging and over the past 12 years I’ve seen programs enacted that have become major lifelines in protecting Pennsylvania Seniors and in creating a much healthier environment for them.

He’s had major budgetary battles with the Legislature, which is controlled by the Republicans, in which he’s won some and lost some. He’s losing some battles now that will hurt many seniors in the future.

>

I seem to remember a snarky-sounding comment recently from Rendell re: Obama wanting “just money,” not bodies, at some political rally.

I can take losing battles if you are fighting, so I hope that he is doing that. And, again, I am just crabby from the fight over framing a whole bunch of things right now. Perception matters and the medium is sometimes the message, and we keep operating in the opposition’s. It is infuriating. Sounds like soom worthy and cool stuff you are doing, excellent work.

Well,he was a very strong Hillary backer, brought out the machine for her in the primary, and did some surrogate attacks on Obama. I would guess that is why. If Hillary would have won the primary, he would be on the short list, probably.

“Perception matters” unfortunately marks Gov. Rendell’s entire governship. He’s always been at odds with the Legislature and truth be told if he wasn’t from Philly (or Pittsburgh for that matter) he would have never survived his first term. The moniker “Fast Eddie” has always been hung around his neck.

As for me personally, I’m on the financial end of the process. But our clinical people do a fantastically wonderful job for their consumers. They are the ones who do the excellent work.

Yep. Short list is for perfect candidates like Sam Nunn and that General Jones dude. Jeebus, we are in a world of hurt.

JC wouldn’t be allowed in to one of those “prayer” breakfasts. Religious profiling, not to mention visa problems. Nor do I think he’d get past Dulles’ Neanderthal-like “security” staff’s questioning. If they send to the brig Italian lawyers who visit their soon-to-be northern Virginian fiances “too often”, they’d certainly do the same to a Middle Eastern visitor who keeps turning the other cheek and who doesn’t look at all like Max von Sydow or Jeffrey Hunter.

OPR is coequally involved. This is a ludicrous study, at first glance. Fn22 p.22=27/115:

“We used the top 20 law schools in 2002 as ranked by U.S. News and World Report: Yale, Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, New York University, University of Chicago, University of Michigan, University of California at Berkeley, Duke, University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern, Cornell, Georgetown, University of Texas, University of California at Los Angeles, Vanderbilt, University of Iowa, University of Minnesota, University of Southern California, and Washington and Lee.”

This study seems to examine defective rejects rather than hirees, and it looks only at the young lawyer programs.

I could see the EPA of Johnson quaking at the prospect of DoJ’s hiring one reject in which the study “questioned” DoJ’s bias, (p.86=91/115, IG/OPR question follows:):

“We asked Elston about a deselected Honors Program candidate selected by ENRD who was in the top 10 percent of his class at Lewis and Clark University, was an articles editor for an environmental journal, and had worked for Earthjustice and the Northwest Environmental Defense Center…The candidate indicated in his essay a strong interest in working in environmental law, including that he wanted ‘to serve as part of the team charged with enforcing the world’s most comprehensive environmental laws, and with defending the crucial work of our environmental and resource management agencies.’

“Elston commented that while he did not know anything about the organizations that the candidate worked for: [Elston quote follows:]

” ‘the impression I’m left with after a quick look at this is that this is someone who had come to the Environment Division…with an agenda, not with an open mind as to the best way to enforce the environment, environmental laws…’ “

Bush, Cheney, and StephenJohnson would be worried about EPA enforcement; Henry Waxman’s May 19, 2008 memo to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform addresses a related matter, with respect to the refusal of EPA to produce documents that would reveal efforts by that triumvirate (B,C,+J) to block implementation of a currently pending CA law much like the one that brought Detroit into the world of pollution control valve (PCV) devices two decades ago, the infamous foot-dragging of car manufacturers to redesign carburetors for retrofitting with PCVs.

Nice job, Chuck.

Anyone in NY think there’s a chance of a primary challenge for that weasel next time he’s up for reelection?

Anyone heard much about this resolution that will come up for a vote this week?
Congressional Resolution Demands Bush Act on Iran.

A non-binding resolution to demand that President Bush impose “stringent inspection requirements” on trade with Iran - language that leaves the door open for a military blockade - will likely come to the House floor this week, according to sources close to Congressional leadership. The legislation, H.Con.Res.362, which is paralleled by a similar Senate bill, has gained bipartisan support rapidly, with more co-sponsors signing on by the day. Once it hits the floor, it’s bound to “pass like a hot knife through butter,” a staffer in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office told Chelsea Mozen of the nonprofit Just Foreign Policy.

http://www.truthout.org/articl.....h-act-iran

God help us. Somebody please put a gun to the Sam Nunn idea.

I keep thinking of Atrios’ disdain for the “committed independents”. Who the hell doesn’t know which side they are on by now? I can kind of forgive the low info types. But I can’t stomach the ones that are just so much better than to belong to either party. They are above it all, and it’s so much better to just snipe at all sides from a safe perch. (apologies to any real independents, I’m only referring to the ones for which independent means “My only ideology is that I will always adopt the position that is between both sides, regardless of what that actually means to policy or reality.)

Ack. End of rant.

The “Grand Inquisitor” chapter of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov — an unmatched take-down of what institutionalized Christianity has become.

Once the screeners heard about his “money changers” position, he’d be relegated to the “free speech zone” reserved for Code Pink.

My understanding was that it actually called for a blockade, is being pressed by AIPAC, and has, through tremendous lobbying and pressure, gained a lot of support.

Excellent point about the analysis of rejects in lieu of examining those who were hired against the total applicant pool. I also liked the bit about using US News’ top 20 ranking rather than the DOJ’s own. A confederacy of dunces.

” ‘the impression I’m left with after a quick look at this is that this is someone who had come to the Environment Division…with an agenda, not with an open mind as to the best way to enforce the environment, environmental laws…’ “

Doesn’t that pretty much describe the Bush “administration’s” hiring criteria?

Just keep in mind that, had he not gone whole hog for McCain, Lieberman would likely be at the very top of Obma’s list. Seriously.

bmaz, thats what I read too.

Here’s some references for others:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/i.....8;aid=9377

http://groups.google.com/group.....423a71f09a

Well that gives me a total of one thing to thank Lieberman for, I guess. Funny that McCain would never be stupid enough to put Lieberman on his ticket. Explain to me again why the “progressive” blogosphere made fun of Kucinich, Gravel, Feingold…

I expect the DFH’s to support the eventual Dem candidate, and I know we don’t have a chance in hell of having a real progressive as a candidate, but didn’t we at least used to put up somewhat of a fight first?

I think I might have a bad attitude today. I should probably get off the blogs for awhile and watch some tennis.

Objecting to money changers at the seat of power and religious veneration? Yup, can’t imagine a visitor with those views getting a US visa from BushCo, even though the tale is manipulated by a writer a generation or two after the event.

“Money changers” were an essential part of the Temple’s operation, helping many who worshiped there — villagers in a currency-poor economy, occupied by a foreign army, who made a rare visit to the big city — match their “sacrifice” or contribution to Temple operations to their limited means. The tale was written after the Temple and its hold over official religious symbolism - along with much of Jerusalem - had been razed. The context being a battle for religious loyalty among the survivors of Rome’s “pacification” - using a surge of legionaires - of Judea.

As i said above, i have been crabby all morning. Started out just against McCain, but it is taking root….

slippery slope these so called “non-binding” resolutions. Was the 2002 war resolution “non binding”?

Well, some of your best stuff comes out when you’re crabby. So you’ve got that going for you.

H.Con. Res 362
http://www.govtrack.us/congres.....=hc110-362

Just completely ignores the latest NIE( national intelligence estimate) on Iran

One of the interesting things about Fine’s report is the criteria he used for defining highly qualified applicants. For the 2002 Honors program, he used a very stringent set. You had to met all four of these:

• Attended a top 20 ranked law school,
• Was in the top 20 percent of the class,
• Had a federal judicial clerkship, and
• Was a member of the law review.

Only 71 (less than 8% of the 911) applicants were in that group. Looking at the data for other years, it is reasonable to assume that group would have had a 100% acceptance rate (don’t forget, these folks had already been picked by various DOJ components). Instead, the acceptance rate for the group was slightly less than for the total pool of applicants (63% vs. 66%). That’s largely because only 3 of the 18 identifiably liberal applicants in the highly qualified group were selected.

Sounds like a lot of hoopla at DOJ to disguise the overtly subjective hiring criteria. Something State is also known for.

As for the “highly qualified” criteria, it seems to leave out quite a lot. How about the top 5 students, or top 1-5% at the top 50 law schools? State supreme court clerkships instead of only federal? Jessup, mock trial, criminal advocacy and client counseling winners at national competitions? Those who also had military or civilian criminal justice experience and those who couldn’t afford to clerk for a year or two and still pay law school debts. But then, Bush doesn’t want “excellence”; the competition frightens him. Imagine earning one’s way through life and career instead of being to the manor born. He just wants loyalty.

One hopes that a President Obama’s DOJ would look for excellence, and excellence in spite of adversity, with a keener eye.

” Correctly translated, it means I ruined your government through my lies, incompetence and outsourcing, and by allowing the private sector to regulate in their interest instead of yours, all on your dime. Now I’m goin’ home and you can’t touch me. Naah.

EOH: suppose you believed, “The world is globalized; I’m among the elites and nation-states are passe, the function of money is to ‘create wealth’ via investment, and I have all the SuperDuper InsideKnowledge that the ignorant, unwashed mobs don’t possess. ‘Public private partnerships’ include planning oil/resource wars in conjunction with oil multinationals to keep oil out of the clutches of the Soviets, the Iranians, and anyone else who doesn’t kowtow to me.”
Assuming that they actually believe the view I’ve just outlined, then what they’ve done has a certain chilling, cold, frozen logic to it. Under that strange ‘logic’ they are extremely competent, in the sense that they’ve fulfilled many of their key objectives, despite public outcry and the contempt of millions.

Big Oil signing ‘no bid contracts in Iraq’?
They’ve just met their objectives.

IMHO, ‘what goes around comes around’, but these people almost certainly don’t feel one bit upset by what they’ve done. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn they’re rather proud of it, and see those of us who object as rather quaint.

I don’t think that implication is that those criteria are the only possible ones for qualifying, or the only one that should be used by a selection committee. It’s just that an IG has to pick some set of criteria to measure against; and those are a sufficiently reasonable proxy for quality that one can examine the extent to which applicant quality is taken into account.

The numbers WO gives certainly say, pretty clearly, that applicant quality was simply not a consideration for acceptance. Even had liberals been accepted at the same rate as the general pool, the rate at which these 8% were accepted would only have been 10% higher than average.

Am I correct to assume that is a rhetorical question?
How could he not be?!

I thought Ciongoli’s name sounded familiar.

He’s the guy who helped prepare Alito, then went to work as Alito’s law clerk at the S Ct. Looks like he went briefed in on how Alito should rule, about what, for whom and whyfor.

All that in addition to his prior work restricting the 9/11 Commission access to people and documents (I wonder if it was his idea for Cheney to go hold Bush’s hand during the commission questions?)

And Wray must have really had a hard time finding time for both torture field trips AND salting DOJ with underqualified, obstruction oriented, pro-Republican crimes and cover up, puppets.

Shocking.

What’s next… all heads should role.
Mukasey says he sorry… WTF?
Where’s the report on Gonzo?

72 - Right now, my hopes pretty much end at “Excellence at Executive Amnesty” for the Obama DOJ.

Does anyone really believe for one minute that McNulty didn’t know what Elston was up to? And that McNulty’s boss didn’t know either? And that McNulty’s boss’ boss . . .

empytwheel @41

logorrhea = “a diarrhea of the mouth problem”

If Bush was Corporate Prez, the Board would immediately fired his arse
They have fuckin’ gamed the system, played out the clock, fiddled and diddled and have harmed the justice system.
Nancy, impeachment is back on the table!

Insanity gone wild. Committed to getting it wrong

I wonder if Fine produced a draft, then Mukasey got the commission to walk OPR into the project. Better appearances than publication of a redacted version, especially when Judge Bates is concerned about how to review Conyers’s committee’s subpoenas, whether congress deserves to have the right to subpoena Miers, Bolten.

ot
Interesting one hour watch and listen
http://www.informationclearing.....e20155.htm

Is deselecting the same as a wardrobe malfunction?

This study seems to examine defective rejects rather than hirees, and it looks only at the young lawyer programs.

I figured the focus on the political appointees’ “pre-screening” activities was for the express purpose of providing cover for the various “Department components” (except probably Criminal Div but we’re gonna let them off the hook; and Civil Rights Div but we’re saving them for later) and a pretty transparent attempt to pin all wrong-doing on people who have left DOJ — voila! problem solved!

Besides the tweaks in the Recommendations section (with pats on the back all around for making changes in 2007 and a couple cheers for Mukasey), Fine seems willing to wash his hands of the whole mess:

We concluded that, as a result of the actions of McDonald and Elston, many qualified candidates were deselected by the Screening Committee because of their perceived political or ideological affiliations. We believe that McDonald’s and Elston’s conduct constituted misconduct and also violated the Department’s policies and civil service law that prohibit discrimination in hiring based on political or ideological affiliations.

However, because both McDonald and Elston have resigned from the Department, they are no longer subject to discipline by the Department for their actions. Nevertheless, we recommend that the Department consider the findings in this report should either McDonald or Elston apply in the future for another position with the Department.

So even though Fine spent 3 pages laying out the particular sections of the CFR, USC, and case law that “prohibit discrimination in hiring based on political or ideological affiliations”, and admits that (at minimum) McDonald and Elston did exactly that, he doesn’t think McDonald and Elston should be prosecuted? We should just think twice before giving ‘em another job in DOJ? Somebody please tell me that last sentence was snark????

Ew
http://rawstory.com/news08/200.....etap-bill/

Feingold, Dodd planning filibuster of wiretap bill

FEINGOLD BASICALLY SAID THIS ON DEMOCRACY NOW TODAY

Keep in mind what cboldt has told us about the procedure. Filibuster is not what it used to be, what Feingold can accomplish from what he said is talk for one hour during a maximum of a 30 hour period. The key is still Obama, Reid and Durbin laying the whip to the caucus. Filibuster won’t do squat in the long run unless several Senators are going to help and are literally going to maximally monkeywrench every conceivable point. There is no discussion of such an all out effort, so this is kind of meaningless.