Yellow hankie on the turf.

Very nice work putting the pieces together. The white house will still try to weasel out of it with a "we took DOJ's word about what they were 'aware' of," but the earlier email establishes that they were advised that the AG's chief of staff was aware of Rove's involvement. Subpoena on the way to Oprison.

how reminiscent of watergate. nothing like a good ol' justice department scandal that doesn't involve claims of national security secrecy. this is gettin' fun!

If Scooter didn't prompt him to, The Decider might reeeeally wanna revisit his hardline policy on issuing pardons.

The guy's name isn't really "O **PRISON**," is it? Seriously? As in, "Gosh and begorah, laddies, it sure does scare me wits out to think about spendin' a few years in o'Prison for all this!!!"

Joe Rogan was right: "I’m telling you, man… the universe has a sense of humor. A [freaking] wicked one, too."

Are there any Bush Administration employees who aren't dirty? Congress will have to budget a few billion dollars more than anticipated to build enough Club Feds to house them all.

Oh - and I do agree with the comments above, especially the yellow hankie one. The whole USAG story is one of laughable screw-ups. Do they even check their own documents to see if the next Talking Point will fly?

These are lawyers. Set aside the universal hate of lawyers that folks have. There are DOJ and WHC lawyers. It is staggering that they are so errant in the positions they are rolling out. They either don't give a f*ck, or are the biggest collection of idiots in the profession. This is keystone cops level stuff. When we have cases where our clients f*ck up this bad, we instantly go into "what's the best settlement we can come up with to just make it go away" mode. These would literally be nightmare clients to have.

..."The Decider might reeeeally wanna revisit his hardline policy on issuing pardons."

So if you pardon someone, isn't that the same thing as giving them immunity? Once pardoned, why not call 'em to testify. No 5th pleading at that point.

We should be greatfull for the doc dumps. I am actually shocked we are getting them. Anyway at this point I wouldn't put too much stock in them knowing what they are doing in regard to the releases. It's probable that the incompetence is so deep that whoever "they" are who are doing the releasing don't have a clue.

Oprison! What can you say? Even, you can't make this stuff up, falls short. Is he a Regent alumi too?

When lying becomes a habit and becomes the norm, it's as if it is the truth. A bad side effect of habitual lying is poor memory.

I want to see the likely earlier versions of the "Reid letter re cummins-griffin v.4.doc". It suggests there are 3 earlier versions.

Pinson - pages 75-77 do look like Oprison's correction. They're document 1032-1034, clearly following up the e-mail.

I think it's important to remember that they issued the emails that have been "discovered". I would be suspect of anything that has come out. This puke isn't coming before Congress with anything like confession and contrition in his heart. These people are not running scared yet, so be prepared for more of that "I don't recall that" bullshit. I don't think we will start to know the truth of what happened until there is some immunity taken.

Security Code snake

JOSH -- I saw on another comment thread that no one could find out if Monica Goodling actually had a license to practice law. Any follow up on that?

Was the actual Word document that was attached to these e-mails among those released in the DOJ dump? If so, it would be very helpful to see what, if any, changes Oprison made to the original letter drafted by Sampson.

What's available here doesn't explicitly implicate Oprison in anything. There's no way to tell what his recommendations were (theoretically he could've suggested something along the lines of "I don't think it's a good idea for you to say that Karl, Harriet, et al were not involved in the decision to replace Cummins, since we know that they were.").

Is it likely that the WHCO said something along those lines to Sampson? No. But until the various drafts of the letter are made available, there's no way to be sure that they didn't.

And if in fact WHCO _didn't_ say something along those lines, then what gives? Aren't these people supposed to be smart?

This is the guy who's firing United States Attorneys because they aren't tough enough on election fraud?

>> The complaint, filed with Loudoun Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Plowman and Clarke County Commonwealth’s Attorney Suzanne M. Perka, potentially could lead to criminal and civil charges against Oprison and members of his campaign staff, and disqualification of Oprison from the ballot. The offenses range, according to Leesburg2day, from the Oprison campaign having an ineligible campaign worker collect signatures and sign affidavits to accusations of tampered and mishandled documents. Sayeth Leesburg2Day:

>> Many of the complaints center around 22-year-old Andrew Tyrell, a Patrick Henry College student working for Oprison. Tyrell came from Florida and apparently was registered to vote there until May’s campaign raised questions with the local Republican Party shortly after the petitions were delivered about whether he was an eligible Virginia voter. Tyrell’s car was also registered in Florida.

>> Tyrell signed many of the affidavits verifying the signature on the campaign petition forms. The form states that the person signing must be at least 18, have no felony convictions and be eligible to vote in Virginia. After the concern was raised, Tyrell registered to vote in Virginia, an action confirmed by the local electoral board.

http://baconsrebellion.blogspot.com/2005/05/criminalizing-opposition.html

No, not a Regent Grad.

With credentials like these, he could be a Democrat!

The President has named Christopher G. Oprison to be Associate Counsel to the President. Mr. Oprison previously served as a Senior Litigation Associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, LLP and as a Marine Corps prosecutor. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of California, Los Angeles and his JD from George Washington University.

Posted by: jdw
Date: March 28, 2007 07:41 PM

These are fine experienced lawyers as well. For example, Ms. Goodling graduated from Pat Robertson's law school. That is a resume diamond only in this dipshit findamentalist administration.

The folks are all a bunch of yes people with no real "lawyer" experience. How many cases has dough boy Sampson tried? Goodling? Griffin? I would wager none!

This folks are nothing more than good christian whores for our sod of a president, not too dissimilar from the fresh, clean, sweet, virginal, well-oiled rotating regimen of good christian Utah Boy Scouts Karl keeps on 24 hour call in an unnamed location in DC. Their underlings are probably no better.

This reflects so well on those numerous experienced and reputable lawyers at DOJ and the US Attorney's offices that are real attorneys and that have tried cases and that will try important cases under the lingering cloud created by this scandal for some time to come.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070328/pl_nm/usa_prosecutors_dc

The poor saps have been going at it blindfolded. Can't tell any more the difference between "political," and "partisan."

The administration contends that the ousters were justified and largely performance-related or involved policy differences.

"The distinction between 'political' and 'performance-related' reasons for removing a U.S. attorney is, in my view, largely artificial," Sampson said.

Posted by: pol
Date: March 28, 2007 08:20 PM

Possible. However, once you start lying you will eventually get busted, sometimes even by the truth. This is universal and applies to Rove.

Make that Sampson, not Simpson. D'oh!

Posted by: Jamey
Date: March 28, 2007 08:25 PM

What firm practice was Sampson in at this large firm? Litigation?

I would think that lying becomes exponentially more difficult as you add more people who HAVE to lie. This seems to be a heady brew of several people who HAVE to lie.

I posted the following on an earlier thread yesterday. Was my earlier read on this story correct?

*******************************************
On the Chicago Tribune page, there is a link to a story with a picture of Karl Rove above it that says "Email trail leads to Karl Rove" and a reference to CNN. I can't seem to find this story, the link doesn't go anywhere.

Is this story about to break? Or did I miss something lately?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-070327gonzales,1,2575444.story?coll=chi-news-hed

See my post with the screenshot of the URL link above.
Posted by: Buck Batard
Date: March 27, 2007 09:07 PM
********************************************

Did CNN have this story yesterday?
The link and picture of Karl Rove is still up on the Chicago Tribune webpage, but the link still doesn't work.

Is the MSM actually ahead of us on this story?

See my post below. I put it up on our main page at Badattitudes but took it down and have it off the main page, but the link below works.

http://badattitudes.com/MT/archives/2007/03/does_email_trai.html

"U.S. attorneys are political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president. The president may fire them for any reason at all. That includes not implementing the president's policy about criminal prosecutions. It also includes being in the way of someone else whom the president wants to appoint for patronage reasons."

"Why wasn't a fuss made when Bush fired Donald Rumsfeld? He is every bit as much a political appointee as the U.S. attorneys are."

"Were the dedicated staffers who worked on various committees while the Republicans were in control retained by the incoming Democrats? Or were some of those staffers fired because of their (gasp!) partisan affiliation?"

"Democrats have the breathtaking audacity to claim that Bush's replacing his own political appointees is "politicizing prosecutions."

It is just shocking that Sampson and Goodling have no experience as practicing attys (and I can't find out where, if anyplace, either is admitted to practice), yet these two hacks are passing judgment on career litigating attys. What is this? The Stepford DOJ? This admin just hires two mindless robots who've been indoctrinated with some crap about GB is God, or screwing over the Constitution is God's plan, or lying is good when done in His name, or some such other idiocy. Goodling and Sampson have absolutely no credentials whatsoever. None. Have they ever even been inside a courtroom? That is shocking in and of itself!
Arlen should be forced to testify as to his involvement in this whole mess. He sold his soul (if he ever had one) a long time ago (I was around for Anita Hill). He knew damn well what was going on here. Otherwise, he'd be screaming bloody murder. He's in on it. Respondeat superior. He's responsible for what his aides do. HE did this! Or at least he let it happen. Which makes him at the very least a co-conspirator. What a disgusting wretch of a human being!

The least Arlen Spinchter should do is recuse himself and have another rethug sit in for the rest of this investigation. How he can face himself in the mirror everyday... Today with Lurita Doan was so much fun, really fun. And tomorrow Kyle "I don't recall" Sampson should be juicy squirmtime.

@Mrs. P:
Wonkette has been following the shredder at OVP's residence, with pics, tonguein-cheek. It's not such a joke now, is it?
http://wonkette.com/politics/dick-cheney/shreddin-with-dick-211028.php

Regarding admission to bar, Monica is admitted in Virgina and Sampson somewhere, year of admission unknown. I don't have the cites, but don't waste time on that, it's established.

Monica's whereabouts from law graduation in 1999 until DOJ picked her up as a public affairs schedule C in about 2002, seem to be without documentation so far.

Does anyone know what time the barbeque starts tomorrow....Roast Republican on the spit yum, yum.

Josh & Co: please add documents #1032-1034 to the #1031 document you have linked above. As Pinson and I were pointing out above, it's clearly the Word attachment with Oprison's corrections. They're pages 75-77 of the orginal PDF (Pinson provided the link).

I think they tend to be important.

The e-mail implies White House *approval* of the letter to Congress that people are asserting is untruthful.

The Word document shows *active participation* in drafting the letter. Oprison's corrects are incorporated in the final letter sent.

It eliminates the type of defense that is commonly being used - "We approved it, but really didn't pay attention to the details."

We've seen a similar defense rolled out by Fredo on other items in the USAG story, so one can expect it out of the White House.

Tying Oprison to the letter drags him into. Let's say he claims that he made the corrections and gave approval, specifically on the Rove section, based on "information and belief" given to him by others. Three guess on where that information and belief leads to on the Griffin matter?

So adding documents #1032-1034 after document #1031 provides a more clear picture for Congress to chase.

Firing a prosecutor for failing to find wide voter fraud is like firing a park ranger for failing to find Sasquatch.

that's a quote from the article linked to by the original Josh Marshall TPM blog, which doesn't take comments.

... on the other hand, no comment is needed ... that's the beauty of that blog!

but here I am commenting anyway

Is that Radar O'Reilly?

Cool...

All you need to file a grievance against Mr. Sampson can be found here:

grievanceproject(dot)wordpress(dot)com