NY Times calls for Attorney General's dismissal.

[Balta1701]

To be honest, I don't know how Fitzgerald is still around. This guy has been so far up everyone's ass in Chicago, its amazing he is still alive. He has hunted down Daley guys, and Ryan guys equally. If he survives the 09 inevitable purge, I wouldn't be surprised to seem him indict King Richard himself.

Does the White House have the authority to remove a "Special prosecutor" once one has been appointed? Beats me. Would sure look bad if they did, I'd say.

Edited March 14, 2007 by Balta1701

[southsider2k5]

Speaking of. . . it looks like the Conrad Black case is starting up and you gioys should be able to enjoy that for a while, eh?

 

Yeah Black is going to be a fun one. He is going to be up creek without a paddle. I walk past the federal building on my way to our office in the MERC building and they were loaded up with camera trucks at 5:45 am. That means someone big is on trial...

[NorthSideSox72]

If Mrs. Bill Clinton gets elected, though, her policies and "cover-ups" (unless it sells more papers, i.e. Monica!!!) will definitely not be as widely reported, though.

I cannot disagree with this strongly enough. Its the opposite of what will happen.

 

The next Prez, regardless of party, will be the most scrutinized yet. And if its Hilary, she'll be even more scrutinized than most of the other candidates, except possibly Obama.

[kapkomet]

I cannot disagree with this strongly enough. Its the opposite of what will happen.

 

The next Prez, regardless of party, will be the most scrutinized yet. And if its Hilary, she'll be even more scrutinized than most of the other candidates, except possibly Obama.

Well, you're wrong.

 

In the "new media", you're probably right.

[Rex Kickass]

I think I mentioned that in my post. Yep. I did.

 

It was "sex" and it sold.

 

And that's NOT why he was impeached, but nice try.

 

You're right. The President was impeached because there was an element of the GOP that refused to accept the legitimacy of the Clinton presidency and sought to undermine it in every way necessary.

 

And the President was impeached based on a question asked in a deposition before a grand jury regarding the sexual nature of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

 

He said he did not have a sexual relationship. In video taped Grand Jury testimony he admitted to an inappropriate physical relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

 

Many people considered this an act of perjury and he was impeached based on that and obstruction of justice related to this testimony, officially.

[whitesoxfan101]

You're right. The President was impeached because there was an element of the GOP that refused to accept the legitimacy of the Clinton presidency and sought to undermine it in every way necessary.

 

And those people are 100 percent right about the presidency itself.

 

But in all seriousness, I would assume most people with a brain would admit the Clinton impreachment was at best, grasping for straws, and more likely a total joke.

[southsider2k5]

You're right. The President was impeached because there was an element of the GOP that refused to accept the legitimacy of the Clinton presidency and sought to undermine it in every way necessary.

 

And that would be exactly how I would sum up the last 6 years for Bush as well.

[Balta1701]

And that would be exactly how I would sum up the last 6 years for Bush as well.

Except in 1 case, the opposition had 0 power, and in the other case, they had an awful lot of power. And in 1 case, the media did it's job.

Edited March 15, 2007 by Balta1701

[Balta1701]

So, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service did a study of the recent history of the in-term turnover of U.S. attorneys since the Reagan years. It appears that during the Clinton years, there were 2 U.S. attorneys who were forced to resign before the end of their usual term.

Larry Colleton, U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Florida. Colleton, appointed by President Clinton, according to news reports, “had been U.S. attorney for Florida’s middle district for only five months on May 6 [1994] when he was videotaped grabbing Jacksonville television reporter Richard Rose by the throat. The newsman had been trying to question him about recent decisions in his office.”26 He resigned in July 1994.

 

Kendall Coffey, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. Coffey, appointed by President Clinton, resigned on May 12, 1996, according to news reports, “amid accusations that he bit a topless dancer on the arm during a visit to an adult club after losing a big drug case.”27

So let's see...reasons for removal of an attorney during the Clinton admin; biting a stripper. Reasons for removal during the Bush admin; investigating too many Republicans.

 

I guess they're right, Clinton did ask attorneys to resign mid-term too.

[kapkomet]

So, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service did a study of the recent history of the in-term turnover of U.S. attorneys since the Reagan years. It appears that during the Clinton years, there were 2 U.S. attorneys who were forced to resign before the end of their usual term.

So let's see...reasons for removal of an attorney during the Clinton admin; biting a stripper. Reasons for removal during the Bush admin; investigating too many Republicans.

 

I guess they're right, Clinton did ask attorneys to resign mid-term too.

You are the cherry pickingest, most liberal agenda driven soxtalker around. That should be your new member title.

[Cknolls]

You are the cherry pickingest, most liberal agenda driven soxtalker around. That should be your new member title.

 

 

LMAO.

[mr_genius]

You are the cherry pickingest, most liberal agenda driven soxtalker around.

 

[Balta1701]

Ohh goodie, even more cherries!

Washington, DC – In light of e-mails released by the House Judiciary Committee this week in response to the on-going U.S. Attorney firing scandal, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sent a letter today to Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), asking for an investigation into whether the White House has violated its mandatory record-keeping obligation under the Presidential Records Act (PRA).

 

One email, sent to Justice Department Chief of Staff D. Kyle Sampson from J. Scott Jennings, White House Deputy Political Director, uses an email account, [email protected], on a server owned by the Republican National Committee. This raises serious questions about whether the White House was trying to deliberately evade its responsibilities under the PRA, which directs the president to take all necessary steps to maintain presidential records to provide a full accounting of all activities during his tenure.

 

A number of other emails from Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove’s former assistant Susan Ralston to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff document Ms. Ralston’s use of three outside domains: rnchq.com (used for the headquarters of the Republican National Committee), georgebush.com and aol.com. In many of these emails Ms. Ralston is communicating inside White House information to Mr. Abramoff in response to Mr. Abramoff’s efforts to broker deals for his clients and place specified individuals in positions within the administration.

 

CREW has learned that to fulfill its statutory obligations under the PRA, the White House email system automatically copies all messages created by staff and sends them to the White House Office of Records Management for archiving. It appears that the White House deliberately bypassed the automatic archiving function of its own email system that was designed to ensure compliance with the PRA.

[FlaSoxxJim]

You are the cherry pickingest, most liberal agenda driven soxtalker around. That should be your new member title.

 

LMAO.

 

 

I don't see where it is cherrypicking to respond to the people who said the current sacking is 'exactly what Clinton did' to go and actually find out what exactly Clinton did do in terms of firing U.S. attorneys in the middle of their term. There was obviously a reason to fire the dude who choked the reporter, and I guess biting your stripper is a no-no as well (I'll file that away as useful information). In the current situations, the reasons do not seem to be as legitimate, do they?

[mr_genius]

they only way to resolve this is to commission a committee to authorize a committee to investigate the authorization of the commission of the committee.

 

then we'll get the truth

[FlaSoxxJim]

they only way to resolve this is to commission a committee to authorize a committee to investigate the authorization of the commission of the committee.

 

then we'll get the truth

YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!

[mr_genius]

YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!

 

i'll take that as a "Yay" to my committee proposal. thank you for your vote.

[southsider2k5]

I don't see where it is cherrypicking to respond to the people who said the current sacking is 'exactly what Clinton did' to go and actually find out what exactly Clinton did do in terms of firing U.S. attorneys in the middle of their term. There was obviously a reason to fire the dude who choked the reporter, and I guess biting your stripper is a no-no as well (I'll file that away as useful information). In the current situations, the reasons do not seem to be as legitimate, do they?

 

You are totally right. They should have just fired all of them instead of the ones who weren't doing their political bidding and replaced them with all shills, instead of hiding the guys who you really wanted fired in with the guys who were just political chum.

 

It isn't exactly what Clinton did, as the WSJ notes about as well as I have seen, the Bush team just did an amateur job here at something the Clinton's were masters at....

 

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/fe...ml?id=110009784

 

The Hubbell Standard

Hillary Clinton knows all about sacking U.S. Attorneys.

 

Wednesday, March 14, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

 

Congressional Democrats are in full cry over the news this week that the Administration's decision to fire eight U.S. Attorneys originated from--gasp--the White House. Senator Hillary Clinton joined the fun yesterday, blaming President Bush for "the politicization of our prosecutorial system." Oh, my.

 

As it happens, Mrs. Clinton is just the Senator to walk point on this issue of dismissing U.S. attorneys because she has direct personal experience. In any Congressional probe of the matter, we'd suggest she call herself as the first witness--and bring along Webster Hubbell as her chief counsel.

 

As everyone once knew but has tried to forget, Mr. Hubbell was a former partner of Mrs. Clinton at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock who later went to jail for mail fraud and tax evasion. He was also Bill and Hillary Clinton's choice as Associate Attorney General in the Justice Department when Janet Reno, his nominal superior, simultaneously fired all 93 U.S. Attorneys in March 1993. Ms. Reno--or Mr. Hubbell--gave them 10 days to move out of their offices.

 

At the time, President Clinton presented the move as something perfectly ordinary: "All those people are routinely replaced," he told reporters, "and I have not done anything differently." In fact, the dismissals were unprecedented: Previous Presidents, including Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, had both retained holdovers from the previous Administration and only replaced them gradually as their tenures expired. This allowed continuity of leadership within the U.S. Attorney offices during the transition.

 

Equally extraordinary were the politics at play in the firings. At the time, Jay Stephens, then U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia, was investigating then Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski, and was "within 30 days" of making a decision on an indictment. Mr. Rostenkowski, who was shepherding the Clinton's economic program through Congress, eventually went to jail on mail fraud charges and was later pardoned by Mr. Clinton.

 

Also at the time, allegations concerning some of the Clintons' Whitewater dealings were coming to a head. By dismissing all 93 U.S. Attorneys at once, the Clintons conveniently cleared the decks to appoint "Friend of Bill" Paula Casey as the U.S. Attorney for Little Rock. Ms. Casey never did bring any big Whitewater indictments, and she rejected information from another FOB, David Hale, on the business practices of the Arkansas elite including Mr. Clinton. When it comes to "politicizing" Justice, in short, the Bush White House is full of amateurs compared to the Clintons.

 

And it may be this very amateurism that explains how the current Administration has managed to turn this routine issue of replacing Presidential appointees into a political fiasco. There was nothing wrong with replacing the eight Attorneys, all of whom serve at the President's pleasure. Prosecutors deserve supervision like any other executive branch appointees.

 

The supposed scandal this week is that Mr. Bush had been informed last fall that some U.S. Attorneys had been less than vigorous in pursuing voter-fraud cases and that the President had made the point to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Voter fraud strikes at the heart of democratic institutions, and it was entirely appropriate for Mr. Bush--or any President--to insist that his appointees act energetically against it.

 

Take sacked U.S. Attorney John McKay from Washington state. In 2004, the Governor's race was decided in favor of Democrat Christine Gregoire by 129 votes on a third recount. As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and other media outlets reported, some of the "voters" were deceased, others were registered in storage-rental facilities, and still others were convicted felons. More than 100 ballots were "discovered" in a Seattle warehouse. None of this constitutes proof that the election was stolen. But it should have been enough to prompt Mr. McKay, a Democrat, to investigate, something he declined to do, apparently on grounds that he had better things to do.

 

In New Mexico, another state in which recent elections have been decided by razor thin margins, U.S. Attorney David Iglesias did establish a voter fraud task force in 2004. But it lasted all of 10 weeks before closing its doors, despite evidence of irregularities by the likes of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn. As our John Fund reported at the time, Acorn's director Matt Henderson refused to answer questions in court about whether his group had illegally made copies of voter registration cards in the run-up to the 2004 election.

 

As for some of the other fired Attorneys, at least one of their dismissals seemed to owe to differences with the Administration about the death penalty, another to questions about the Attorney's managerial skills. Not surprisingly, the dismissed Attorneys are insisting their dismissals were unfair, and perhaps in some cases they were. It would not be the first time in history that a dismissed employee did not take kindly to his firing, nor would it be the first in which an employer sacked the wrong person.

 

No question, the Justice Department and White House have botched the handling of this issue from start to finish. But what we don't have here is any serious evidence that the Administration has acted improperly or to protect some of its friends. If Democrats want to understand what a real abuse of power looks like, they can always ask the junior Senator from New York.

 

Except in 1 case, the opposition had 0 power, and in the other case, they had an awful lot of power. And in 1 case, the media did it's job.

 

Oh I know. Investigating Clinton bad, investigating Bush good.

[FlaSoxxJim]

You're all being dense on purpose I know, but it is irksome.

 

2 months into an administration ≠ 6 years into an administration. The circumstances are very different, and ritual incantation of the ever-pithy Kap&SS "It's Always Different" mantra doesn't change that fact.

[Balta1701]

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/fe...ml?id=110009784

Oh I know. Investigating Clinton bad, investigating Bush good.

In a lot of those cases, the Clintons fully deserved to be investigated, just as in a lot of these cases, the Bush Administration deserved to be investigated. But the reality is...only 1 of those actually happened.

Back in the mid-1990s, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, aggressively delving into alleged misconduct by the Clinton administration, logged 140 hours of sworn testimony into whether former president Bill Clinton had used the White House Christmas card list to identify potential Democratic donors.

 

In the past two years, a House committee has managed to take only 12 hours of sworn testimony about the abuse of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

...

An examination of committees' own reports found that the House Government Reform Committee held just 37 hearings described as ''oversight" or investigative in nature during the last Congress, down from 135 such hearings held by its predecessor, the House Government Operations Committee, in 1993-94, the last year the Democrats controlled the chamber.

 

Party loyalty does not account for the difference: In 1993-94, the Democrats were investigating a Democratic administration.

...

In 1993-1994, under the chairmanship of Democrat John D. Dingell of Michigan, the panel's oversight efforts accounted for 117 pages in its activities report for the session, compared with 24 pages in the last Congress. The committee in 1993-1994 held 153 investigative hearings, compared with 129 during 2003-2004, and the more recent hearings have not targeted the Bush administration.

 

Representative Joe Barton, a Texas Republican who is now chairman of the Republican panel, said it was natural that opposing Democrats would want to be tougher on the Bush administration, as he said the GOP was on Clinton. But he acknowledged that ''Republicans in general have not emphasized oversight in the way that Mr. Dingell did."

...

The agenda was different during the Clinton administration. The government reform panel alone, for example, issued 1,052 subpoenas related to investigations of the Clinton administration and the Democratic National Committee from 1997 to 2002, and only 11 subpoenas related to allegations of Republican abuse.

[kapkomet]

You're all being dense on purpose I know, but it is irksome.

 

2 months into an administration ≠ 6 years into an administration. The circumstances are very different, and ritual incantation of the ever-pithy Kap&SS "It's Always Different" mantra doesn't change that fact.

And it's irksome that every single thing that is even a little questionable in terms of the administration's happenings rises to the level of "SCANDAL!!!!" in most of your eyes.

 

It's shallow, stupid, and maybe even questionable. In fact, I've said repeatedly I personally dislike a lot of the Bush Administration policy. But I certainly don't run around and throw gas on the "republicansarebabykillers.com and republicanskickthes***outofpuppies.com crowd" like some here do.

[FlaSoxxJim]

And it's irksome that every single thing that is even a little questionable in terms of the administration's happenings rises to the level of "SCANDAL!!!!" in most of your eyes.

 

It's shallow, stupid, and maybe even questionable. In fact, I've said repeatedly I personally dislike a lot of the Bush Administration policy. But I certainly don't run around and throw gas on the "republicansarebabykillers.com and republicanskickthes***outofpuppies.com crowd" like some here do.

 

The administration does a good job all on its own throwing gas on the fire. But I'm in complete agreement that the current situation is far, far from being the most odious thing Abu Gonzales has been a part of. And he may very well take the fall for something that would have been a much smaller issue if it wasn't more fuel on his fire.

 

Tax evasion was far from Al Capone's worst offense, but that's what took him down.

 

OMFG. . . that moonbat lefty a$$hole just compared the Attorney General to Al Capone. . .

 

No, of course I didn't. I merely mean to point out that it's not necessarily the biggest scandal or crime that brings a body down.

[Balta1701]

No, of course I didn't. I merely mean to point out that it's not necessarily the biggest scandal or crime that brings a body down.

In fact, it's usually the cover-up which is worse than the crime. Which as I pointed out on the first page, is exaclty what happened here; because it appears that there is no law at all banning what the Bush Administration did. There are laws, however, against lying to Congress, and Mr. Gonzalez gave testimony under oath to Congress on this matter about a month ago, including several statements that are directly contradicted by the evidence at hand.

[kapkomet]

The bottom line. Bill Clinton lies better then George Bush.

 

/thread

[Damen]

The bottom line. Bill Clinton lies better then George Bush.

 

/thread

 

Did Janet Reno lie to Congress? No. Gonzalez did. That would probably be the more accurate bottom line.