So... the take-home lesson is when it comes to "the judge," it depends what the meaning of "was" is?

Imprecise! That him and george make a perfect pair. Birds of a flock, so to speak.

who is he trying to kid???????

The "process was not scientific," Sampson admits. "But neither was the process random or aribitrary."

The process, as was clearly shown in the emails, was AFTER THE FACT. They scrambled to determine the reasons AFTER THE FIRINGS. This is quite obvious to anyone who isn't........well.................them.

"a pattern of “imprecision” in Mr. Gonzales’s public statements."

or in vernacular English, a lying sack of ...

Ummm, how can Gonzo have been a judge on the TX Supreme Court when he has no experience with litigation? Did he go directly from law school to Bush's inner enclave? And if it's bad to be a lawyer who uses imprecise language, how much worse is it to be a state SC judge who uses imprecise language? Has anyone seen any of his rulings or opinions?

Monica Mystery Update!

At the TPM Cafe, I posted details of the low-level criminal cases prosecuted by Goodling in the fall of 2004 and the details of a 2005 appeals case heard by Luttig which lists McNulty, Elston and Goodling.

And I posted Monica's resume circa December 1996!

Education

1997 - REGENT UNIVERSITY, SCHOOL(S) OF LAW AND GOVERNMENT
Joint Degree Candidate for Juris Doctor and a Masters of Public Policy

1996 - UNIVERSITY OF PARIS/ UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO SCHOOL OF LAW
Completed the Institute of International and Comparative Law in Paris, France

1996 - AMERICAN UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON COLLEGE OF LAW
Completed the first year of a Juris Doctor program in the top 20% of the class

1995 - MESSIAH COLLEGE
Graduated Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Arts in Speech Communications
Minors: Political Science & Chemistry

1988 - DALE CARNEGIE & ASSOCIATES
Graduated from the Dale Carnegie Course in Effective Speaking and Human Relations

More at the TPM Cafe.

I wonder if he has been assisted with his testimony by the White House in any way? If any promises have been made to him about future "opportunities"? Was he fired or did he voluntarily leave? If he was fired, why would have good things to say about everybody he worked with?

Honestly, this is the best guy for the job? The top of the field? The guy who should make hiring decisions about the qualified attorneys? An inarticulate and imprecise Attorney General boggles the mind. So inarticulate and imprecise that a Mormon lawyer in his 30s, with no prosecutorial experience appears to have been running the show. I know it shouldn't given what we know about this administration, but sometimes the ineptitude is simply breathtaking.

If I recall correctly from the first document dump, Mr Battle(Head of the Executive office of the U S Attorneys) and Mr Mercer(the no 3 at Justice) were not involved the "enterprise" until late in the game. Mr. Moschella (OLA head)and Mr. McNulty(the DAG) had to be heavily briefed on the "enterprise" before they testified to Congress. The question then becomes, who besides Mr. Elston, were all these people Sampson was continously consulting to develop his "List of people to be fired"?

The UNSTOPPABLE Mrs. Panstreppon found Monica Goodling's personal website from Regent University circa 1997:

http://web.archive.org/web/19990221141646/home.regent.edu/monigoo/

Among other things, it appears Monica's nickname was "Monigoo" and apparently her dad's name is Bill (putting to rest rumors that she was the offspring of former Rep. Goodling of PA).

I get it. If Gonzo's not a litigator then he must be a ....decider!

is it me, or is sampson basically saying that attorneys who are NOT politically motivated will fail to do their jobs properly?

the bushies are amazing in their ability to twist around logic. now it seems they are arguing that the only way to be truly effective as an "independent" prosecutor is to be 100% beholden to a particular political agenda.

how do these people sleep at night? have they so bastardized the truth that they don't even know what the truth is anymore?

"In retrospect, we've should not have lied so obviously. Clearly "the judge" should have consulted with us before lying. We have our stories straight now, so please allow us one more chance at lying."

Ahhh, the old "imprecise language" defense. Because if it's imprecise, it's open to interpretation, and we all know people interpret things based on their own agendas.

But what's "imprecise" about "I wasn't in the loop" when e-mails and prior testimony place Gonzalez at the center of the US attorney firings? What's "imprecise" about GOP Senators and Representatives pressuring the DOJ, and the US attorneys themselves, to announce groundless voter fraud investigations involving their Democratic opponents just days before a close election?

These GOP appointees are grasping at straws. First it was just a series of "routine" dismissals, then it morphed into "performance issues." Now Sampson is admitting that yes, indeed, the firings were political but it just wasn't explained will by an AG who has marbles in his mouth.

All the memos, testimony and public statements by the AG and others are in fact quite clear and quite contradictory. As the scandal unfolds they are trying to create moving targets, throwing smoke bombs, to give the impression the main issue involved (political manipulation of the justice process) is just a series of poorly turned phrases and all a big misunderstanding.

I call bullshit.

How did Gonzales get to the TX Supreme Court? I'm from Texas: Alberto Gonzales worked for Vincent & Elkins, largest client Enron, and when Karl Rove was looking to manage campaigns for judgeships to stack with corporate reps, Gonzales assisted him in doing so. Put Gonzales directly on the Texas Supreme Court, without ever serving in any position beneath that level. And completely supported by the Bush family and the Texas Republican Party. This is a MADE man.

When the judge says, ‘I wasn’t involved,’ he means something specific. If you teased it out, you would figure out what it was he meant. But in the political world where you only get one shot, it comes across as misleading

I.e., "If we could just please get out our electron microscopes, you would see that the microns representing what he meant are on the legal side of the hair, and those that represent lying to congress and possible obstruction of justice lie on the side that he didn't mean. And honestly, through the electron microscope, it's a really thick piece of hair we're splitting here. Can't we all just please get along?"

When did Monica pass the bar exam? Or did she? Anyone know about this?

"A U.S. Attorney who is unsuccessful from a political perspective, ..., is unsuccessful."

Nice logic there.

The likely suspect for Monica's rabbi is Kay Coles James, formerly Dean of Regent School of Government (see resume) and head of the Office of Personnel Management (the federal government's HR office) for W's entire first term.

Thaks for the quotation from Gonzo's Feb 2006 speech, ShorelineCT!

So he said "public and corporate corruption" was one of the DOG's 5 priority items then, huh? And yet when Carol Lam pursued a public corruption case of historic proportions, she got canned for not following the administration's priorities.

I guess this was another example of Gonzo's imprecise language. Obviously what he really meant was "public and corporate corruption on the part of Democrats." Too bad for Carol Lam that she didn't manage to tease out his precise meaning. And she only got one shot...

(Oops -- apologies for the double-post. It appeared to hang, and I hit "Stop" and used the opportunity to fix a [Freudian?] typo, but it appears the first post had already gone through.)